Thursday, May 20, 2004
Greenpeace prevails, Ashcroft looks for even earlier law
In a rebuke to the U.S. Justice Department, a federal judge in Miami Wednesday threw out a criminal case against the environmental-activist group, Greenpeace, which it had based on an obscure 1872 law against "sailormongering" that it applied to a protest against a ship carrying 70 tons of illegally cut mahogany.
U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan acquitted the group at the end of the prosecution's case, midway through the third day of the jury trial. He said the prosecution had failed to provide enough evidence for the case to go to the jury.
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It was triggered by an April, 2002, protest in which two volunteers from a Greenpeace vessel boarded the APL Jade cargo ship, which was carrying the mahogany from Brazil toward the Port of Miami.
Just a few months before, President George W. Bush himself publicly committed Washington to help developing countries prevent illegal logging of mahogany, and the two activists who boarded the ship unfurled a banner that read, "President Bush, Stop Illegal Logging." The two activists, as well as the four others in the Greenpeace boat, were arrested when they came into port, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, and spent a weekend in jail.
Fifteen months later, however, the Justice Department filed an indictment in Miami against Greenpeace itself under the 1872 law, which had last been used in 1890.
The law was originally intended to keep houses of prostitution and rum shops from luring sailors on incoming ships to shore with promises of women and grog, and the judge decided the case on a technicality. As the boarding took place about six miles from port, according to the Jordan, it did not meet the statutory requirement that it was "about to arrive," suggesting that he might have ruled differently on the motion to dismiss had the boat been much closer when the protest occurred. "Caveat emptor," he warned the defendant in reference to future protests.
You gotta watch out for those rum-laden Greenpeace prostitutes.
posted by chris at 6:05 PM
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