Statement of Independent Trial Monitors
On Verdict in Greenpeace Trial:
It is our collective assessment that the jury verdict against Greenpeace in North Dakota reflects a deeply flawed trial with multiple due process violations that denied Greenpeace the ability to present anything close to a full defense. Attorneys on our team monitored every minute of the proceedings and found multiple violations of due process that denied Greenpeace its right to a fair trial. The problems included a jury that was patently biased in favor of Energy Transfer, with many members working in the fossil fuel industry; a judge who lacked the requisite experience and legal knowledge to rule properly on the complex First Amendment and other evidentiary issues at the center of the case; and incendiary and prejudicial statements by lawyers for Energy Transfer that tried to criminalize Greenpeace and by extension the entire climate movement by attacking constitutionally-protected advocacy.
Our fear that this was an illegitimate corporate-funded SLAPP harassment case was confirmed by our observations. We will be issuing a full report documenting these violations and larger flaws in the case in the coming weeks.
While the trial court verdict is in, the case is far from over. Greenpeace has a right to appeal to the North Dakota Supreme Court and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court. Our committee will continue its work monitoring this critically important case that raises troubling concerns for all advocates in the country.
— Marty Garbus | Natali Segovia | Jeanne Mirer | Terry Collingsworth | Steven Donziger | Nadia Ahmad | Scott Wilson Badenoch, Jr. | Paul Paz y Miño | Ayisha Siddiqa | Wade McMullen | Kip Hale | Simon Taylor
Individual Statements from Trial Monitors:
"In my six decades of legal practice, I have never witnessed a trial as unfair as the one against Greenpeace that just ended in the courts of North Dakota. This is one of the most important cases in American history. The law that can come down in this case can affect any demonstration, religious or political. It's far bigger than the environmental movement. Yet the court in North Dakota abdicated its sacred duty to conduct a fair and public trial and instead let Energy Transfer run roughshod over the rule of law.
Greenpeace has a very strong case on appeal. I believe there is a good chance it ultimately will win both in court and in the court of public opinion."
— Marty Garbus | Trial attorney who has practiced law for six decades and has represented Nelson Mandela, Daniel Ellsberg, Cesar Chavez, and Vaclav Havel
Marty Garbus
Natali Segovia
“Since this case was first filed in federal court in 2017, we knew the deck was stacked against Greenpeace. This case was a deliberate orchestration by a pipeline company not only to silence dissent, but to carefully shape a corporate narrative that demonizes the environmental justice and Indigenous rights movements.
Energy Transfer has an abysmal safety record that has been publicly documented. It continues operating the Dakota Access Pipeline without proper permits across Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s unceded Treaty lands. The company desecrated burial sites in the construction of the pipeline and then denied it during the trial, with a company vice-president dismissing this as “fake news.” Despite Energy Transfer’s campaign to erase these truths, critical information about the company's substandard operational practices continues to surface. Just this week, the Pennsylvania Attorney General launched a new investigation into Energy Transfer and Sunoco for committing environmental crimes in that state, in addition to the 23 criminal convictions the company already has for contaminating water in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
The jury verdict notwithstanding, the struggle over the issues in this case is far from over. This moment underscores the importance of continued monitoring to ensure that our judicial institutions truly serve the people and are not manipulated by powerful corporations, and that due process of law is more than just a lofty aspiration.”
— Natali Segovia, Esq. | Executive Director & Senior Attorney, Water Protector Legal Collective
Steven Donziger
“Greenpeace lost not because it did anything wrong but because it did not get a fair trial. The judge refused to seat an impartial jury and repeatedly made evidentiary decisions that trespassed on basic legal rights protected by the First Amendment and prejudiced the ability of Greenpeace to present its full defense. He also allowed lawyers for Energy Transfer to openly criminalize and defame one of the most storied environmental groups in the world in open court. It was a sad commentary on our court system and on the lack of ethics of Energy Transfer. While the trial is over, the battle to protect the First Amendment and the right to protest — both grievously harmed by this trial — is just beginning.
To be clear, this case is not just about Greenpeace; Greenpeace is simply the stand-in for something much larger. The case is actually an example of how a company can abuse the legal system with a SLAPP-style case to directly attack Indigenous peoples, the climate movement, and the right to protest for all Americans. It was motivated by the spite of a particular fossil fuel company and its billionaire CEO who were angry that Indigenous peoples and their supporters actually stood up to the company's failure to properly respect the wishes of the Standing Rock Sioux over the route of its pipeline. I believe Greenpeace has a very good chance of winning on appeal.”
— Steven Donziger | Environmental and Human Rights Advocate
Jeanne Mirer
“Having followed this case for years and having monitored the trial from the beginning, the jury verdict against Greenpeace was extremely disappointing but not surprising. Courts in North Dakota repeatedly failed to take basic steps necessary to ensure Greenpeace's right to a fair trial was respected. One fundamental problem among many is that the vast majority of residents in the venue — Morton County — clearly had ties to the fossil fuel industry or supported it. Not a single Native American or person of color was seated on the jury. We have documented pervasive bias in the jury pool in favor of Energy Transfer. It appears the company also flooded residents of the area with pro-industry advertisements in the lead-up to the trial in a completely unethical effort to fan the flames of anger against Greenpeace before evidence was heard. Multiple efforts to change the venue to a county other than the protest site, an absolute necessity to ensure a fair trial, were rejected by the court. Juror after juror conceded they had ties to the very oil and gas industry prosecuting the case, and many jurors expressed negative feelings about the protests over the pipeline. Even so, the court would not excuse them for cause. The bottom line is that Greenpeace did not get a fair trial.
At a time when the world needs people to stand up against an obvious erosion of rights in this country, we must recognize the verdict against Greenpeace is designed to instill fear and to discourage people from exercising their constitutional right to protest. We must not let ourselves be discouraged. We know that Energy Transfer put millions of dollars into gaslighting the community into believing that an organization like Greenpeace that is dedicated to peaceful non-violent protest was responsible for the so-called "damages" alleged in the lawsuit. In reality, it was Energy Transfer's failure to properly consult with the Indigenous peoples of North Dakota whose land they sought to cross that caused the protests. The company's own misconduct, arrogance, and intransigence are the real causes of the damages claimed in this case.”
— Jeanne Mirer | President, International Association of Democratic Lawyers
Scott Wilson Badenoch, Jr.
"The flaws in this trial were so numerous that you could teach a master class on how the rule of law can be flagrantly violated based solely on the record in this case. The venue was wrong from the beginning; the jury pool was strikingly biased, as were the 11 jurors eventually empaneled; the judge was wholly unequipped to rule over a case of this complexity and magnitude; Energy Transfer's Big Law attorneys felt empowered by the judge to engage in bad-faith document production practices and ultimately were able to railroad Greenpeace at almost every opportunity. Energy Transfer obtained the result it engineered, but this was not justice and this was not a fair and public trial."
— Scott Wilson Badenoch, Jr., Esq., MDR | Fellow, American Bar Foundation