CT Blue

I have read about this particular story before, but it is definitely not widely known, and, as the linked article points out, it should be a story that is widely publicized.

It demonstrates the increasing predominance of the right in our courts, and the failure of our media to cover abuses perpetrated by both our courts and the corporations to which those courts defer:

Famed indigenous human rights lawyer Steven Donziger had already been under house arrest for over 800 days when he reported to prison on October 27 to begin a six-month sentence. His crime: winning the largest single pollution judgment in history, $9.5 billion, for the Cofan people of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador.

Was the human rights hero jailed in Brazil or China? No, he was sentenced to prison in the USA.

Just a sample of the egregiousness of what happened to this man after he asked that :

When the judge ordered Donziger to turn over his personal computer to Chevron — the company claimed Donziger was was hiding funds — Donziger asked for an unbiased expert to protect confidential information about his clients.

For Donziger’s temerity, the judge charged him with criminal contempt and placed Donziger under house arrest — an unprecedented punishment for an attorney.

It gets worse: when the Justice Department failed to prosecute Donziger, the judge hired, at public expense, a private lawyer to prosecute Donziger. And still worse: the attorney worked for a firm that that represented Chevron!

Once again, Donziger, despite facing jail time, was denied a jury trial.

Read the whole thing. Once again, the New York Times, our paper of record, failed to cover this story as it should have, but that’s to be expected.

We are now well stocked with Trumpian judges, and I think the sort of judicial misbehavior (we’re seeing it on the state level in the Rittenhouse case) will become the norm, with the press carefully looking the other way. In a few years, I’d guess, we’ll have courts going after the media (except Fox) and the press will openly wonder how things ever came to such a pass.