American justice: Civil disobedience against illegal government action earns prison stay

(LP note: In the 1760s and 1770s Sam Adams acted against illegal actions by the British government in Massachusetts. He became an American hero. In 2008, Tim DeChristopher acted against illegal actions by the U.S. government in Utah. He became an convicted felon.)

Climate Activist Tim DeChristopher Given Two-Year Sentence For Derailing Bush Oil Auction

By Brad Johnson on Jul 27, 2011
Think Progress

In the waning days of the Bush presidency, an auction of 130,000 acres of pristine Utah lands near national parks was organized by the Bureau of Land Management as a last-minute gift to the oil and gas industry.

The auction was disrupted by climate activist Tim DeChristopher, then a 27-year-old economics student, who successfully bid for $1.7 million in parcels. Although the Bush leasing plan was found in court to be flawed and has been withdrawn, today DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in federal prison, fined $10,000 for his act of civil disobedience, and taken immediately into custody.

At the sentencing, DeChristopher — a native of West Virginia, where coal companies rule supreme — explained why he was willing to take on the government and the fossil fuel industry, risking a prison sentence that could have been as long as ten years.

(More here.)

A sad day

Editorial, Salt Lake City Tribune

“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. ... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” — Frederick Douglass

If there was any doubt that Tim DeChristopher should be cast as a martyr to his cause, U.S. District Judge Dee Benson’s abominable decision to send the young man to prison has erased it.

Many believed DeChristopher merited some punishment for submitting bogus bids on gas and oil leases on public land. After he was convicted in March, we were among those who called for nothing more than probation, if that. But, now that Benson has spelled out his reasons for sending DeChristopher to prison for two years, we are convinced this charade of a prosecution was bogus from the beginning.

DeChristopher was not prosecuted because he caused harm to the government, to energy developers or to taxpayers, but because he was widely praised for his bold effort to draw attention to a crisis that has been largely ignored by our government. The lease auction that put some precious public lands on the block to be sold for development of fossil fuel energy was later deemed by courts and the federal government to have been illegal. In simple terms, DeChristopher was right.

(Continued here.)