It is perhaps one of the most intriguing recent cases to come before a Court involving purported "civil disobedience". In 2008, Tim DeChristopher, a 27 year old student at Utah University, bid $1.8 million in a Bureau of Land Management oil and gas auction to buy parcels of land. DeChristopher won the bid. The
only problem: he never had any intention of paying. DeChristopher, who has since been charged with two felonies and become something of a folk hero, has always claimed that he monkey-wrenched the auction essentially as a form of protest against former President Bush's policies and their impact on global warming. The State attorney has, in a rather unprecedented way, sought to have the court order DeChristopher's defense lawyer to not raise the civil disobedience defense and instead "focus the jury's attention on
facts", rather than "try to confuse it with appeals based on emotion, sympathy
or other similar conclusions." It is unlikely that such a motion will succeed before the federal court, but in itself it reveals how aware the state is of the sympathy that DeChristopher's actions have elicited, especially in a context where the previous government's environmental policies have come under intense review by the new administration and where the Interior Department has cancelled many bids on environmental grounds.
only problem: he never had any intention of paying. DeChristopher, who has since been charged with two felonies and become something of a folk hero, has always claimed that he monkey-wrenched the auction essentially as a form of protest against former President Bush's policies and their impact on global warming. The State attorney has, in a rather unprecedented way, sought to have the court order DeChristopher's defense lawyer to not raise the civil disobedience defense and instead "focus the jury's attention onfacts", rather than "try to confuse it with appeals based on emotion, sympathy
or other similar conclusions." It is unlikely that such a motion will succeed before the federal court, but in itself it reveals how aware the state is of the sympathy that DeChristopher's actions have elicited, especially in a context where the previous government's environmental policies have come under intense review by the new administration and where the Interior Department has cancelled many bids on environmental grounds.
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