Source: http://vjel.vermontlaw.edu/climate-activists-argue-criminal-acts-legally-excusable-necessity-doctrine/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 10:48:56+00:00

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Posted March 16, 2018 by VJEL & filed under EcoPerspectives Blog.
The decision to allow defendants to present the defense is itself important, regardless of the outcome. Judges have wide discretion to prevent or allow the presentation of the defense at trial.8 Powerful testimony can so emotionally sway juries in defendants’ favor that often when a judge allows defendants to present the defense, charges are simply dropped or settled.9 Thus, these two cases already represent a win for climate activists. But if a jury acquits defendants under the necessity defense, the result would have widespread implications.
In 2013, Massachusetts District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter dropped charges against climate activists that had been granted the right and were prepared to present the necessity defense at trial.18 Sutter stated publicly about his decision at the time that climate change was “one of the gravest crises our planet has ever faced,” about which “the political leadership . . . has been sorely lacking.”19 That charges were dropped shortly after defendants were granted the right to present the defense, and that a District Attorney felt compelled to speak so plainly and critically of legislative inaction on the issue, are powerful indications of the doctrine’s potential.
These developments show climate change activism might more readily find a haven in the necessity defense than previous issues of civil disobedience. Despite the North Dakota judge’s hedging on whether climate change actually presents a risk, most courts now accept that climate change presents an imminent risk of significant, if not catastrophic, damage to health and property.20 And under many iterations of the defense, the action taken need not be designed to avoid the entire harm, but rather to in some way alleviate or reduce the risk.21 So actions taken to curtail some carbon emissions, but not all, might still suffice.
Finally, though defendants might still have other means to pursue change, the defense requires only a lack of reasonable legal alternatives—not any alternative at all.22 That defendants might still petition their congressional representatives or write a newspaper editorial decrying fossil fuel use does not itself preclude taking matters into their own hands. The legal alternatives must also be reasonable. Thus, governmental inaction could well combine with a reasonable exhaustion of alternative legal means to create a situation where direct action on climate change is legally excusable—especially as time runs out on meeting critical climate deadlines.
In this context the necessity doctrine raises critical questions about the courts’ role and the citizen’s ongoing right to life, liberty, and property in the face legislative inaction. Climate change issues have cast doubt on our legal system’s ability to address systemic problems. Requirements for legal standing, courts’ reluctance to address “political questions,” and legislatures’ seeming inability to protect legal rights, lead many climate worriers to consider direct action. The necessity defense cases will provide those worriers with something to consider.
1 Jeremy Brecher, As Their Trials Begins, Climate Protecting “Valve Turners” Say “Shut It Down” Is “Necessity,” Common Dreams (March 10, 2017), https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/03/10/their-trials-begins-climate-protecting-valve-turners-say-shut-it-down-necessity.
2 See, e.g., Memoranda Decision and Order Granting Motion In Limine, North Dakota v. Foster, No. 34-2016-CR-00186 (N.D. Dist. Ct. Northeast Jud. Dist. Pembina Cty. Oct. 6, 2016).
3 John Alan Cohan, Civil Disobedience and the Necessity Defense, 6 Pierce L. Rev. 111, 120-23 (2007), https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1093&context=unh_lr.
6 Washington v. Taylor, No. 6Z0117975 (Wash. Dist. Ct. Spokane Cty. Oct. 16, 2017). The trial is set for April 23, 2018. Defendants blocked a Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail line in protest of coal and oil impacts on health and global warming.
7 Minnesota v. Klapstein, No. 15-CR-16-413 (Minn. Dist. Ct. 9th Jud. Dist. Oct. 11, 2017). Trial was set for December 11, 2017 but was cancelled and the case is awaiting a new trial date. In Montana, a judge denied the Valve Turner defendants the opportunity to present the defense at trial, calling it a publicity stunt designed to “shift responsibility” to the government. Montana v. Higgins, No. DC-16-18 (Mont. Dist. Ct. Twelfth Jud. Dist. Choteau Cty. May 30, 2017). The North Dakota and Washington judges ruled similarly. North Dakota v. Foster, No. 34-2016-CR-00186 (N.D. Dist. Ct. Northeast Jud. Dist. Pembina Cty. Oct. 6, 2016); Washington v. Ward, No. 16-1-01001-5 (Wash. Sup. Ct. Skagit Cty. June 7, 2017). The Washington judge did, however, allow the defendant to testify at trial about his motivations for the action. The first trial ended in a hung jury and the retrial resulted in a burglary conviction.
8 Cohan, supra note 3, at 120.
10 U.S. v. DeChristopher, 695 F.3d 1082, 1096 (10th Cir. 2012). The North Dakota judge ruling on the Valve Turners case cited this 10th Circuit case for the rule.
13 Id. (emphasis in original).
14 See Cohan, supra note 3, at 122.
16 John Vidal, Not Guilty: The Greenpeace Activists Who Used Climate Change as a Legal Defense, The Guardian (Sep. 10, 2008), https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/sep/11/activists.kingsnorthclimatecamp.
18 David Abel, Bristol DA Drops Charges, Says Protestors Were Right, The Boston Globe (Sept. 8, 2014), https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/09/08/activists-drops-charges-case-blocked-coal-shipment-power-plant/sUpBpGxzxAz3E2Vr5RFQQM/story.html.
20 See, e.g., Order Denying Motion to Dismiss, Juliana v. United States, 217 F.Supp.3d 1224 (D. Oregon, Nov. 10, 2016) (holding plaintiffs claim that defendant federal government had violated a substantive due process right to a stable climate by subsidizing and permitting fossil fuel extraction and use was plausible).
21 Cohan, supra note 3, at 134. See also Washington Environmental Council v. Bellon, 732 F.3d 1131, 1143-44 (9th Cir. 2013) (creating a distinction between greenhouse gas emissions with a scientifically discernible effect on global warming from those with a “scientifically indiscernible” effect).

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