Law and Disorder April 29, 2019
Lawyers For The Left: In The Courts, In the Streets And On The Air
Lawyers For The Left: In The Courts, In the Streets And On The Air is the title of the just published book by our own Michael Steven Smith. It profiles the some of the nation’s most effective agents of social change. Michael discusses how he came to write this book and previews several of the lawyers profiled therein.
As Chris Hedges quotes “The lawyers in this book valiantly fought the erosion of justice and assault on the court system.”
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Necessity Defense Upheld In Climate Change Case
In a rare and heartening victory for climate change activists, a Washington state appeals court recently overturned the conviction of a man who employed the so-called necessity defense.
Activist Ken Ward said he had no alternative but to break into a pipeline facility to save the planet from global warming. While several lawyers and clients have presented this strategy in court, it is rarely allowed to proceed.
That’s because in most courts, including federal appeals courts, protesters are unable to meet the threshold burden of showing their actions were in reaction to an imminent threat, like fire chief Steve McQueen blowing up a skyscraper’s water tank to put out a fire in the film The Towering Inferno.
But in his April 8 decision, Judge David Mann ruled that Ward, quote, “reasonably believed the crimes he committed were necessary to minimize the harms that he perceived.”
Last year, Law and Disorder reported on how a Boston prosecutor reduced charges against 13 pipeline protesters who planned to mount a necessity defense, eliminating the possibility of a trial. Even so, West Roxbury Judge Mary Ann Driscoll still found them not guilty for reason of necessity.
In the Washington case, the Court of Appeals reversed the burglary conviction of Ken Ward, saying the trial court judge had violated his Sixth Amendment rights by refusing to allow him to present a “necessity defense” to the jury.
Guest – Ted Hamilton, co-founder and staff attorney of the Climate Defense Center. Ted has studied comparative literature and philosophy at Cornell and Yale, and written about books, politics, and climate change for a variety of publications. During law school he focused on protest defense and growing the climate movement through involvement in the Harvard divestment campaign and internships with the Civil Liberties Defense Center and Climate Disobedience Center.
