Comment by ttiurani
8 hours ago
For context, a statement from the legal experts who monitored the 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.
https://www.trialmonitors.org/statement-of-independent-trial...
As an outsider, why is this a credible institution over the jury and judge?
I can't speak to the institution but the only public statements on their website relate to this particular trial. It could be this is the first ever trial they have monitored in this way; it might also be a group that will only ever monitor this one trial.
I guess I was expecting a Matt Levine-style breakdown of why the trial was run improperly and why an appellate court would be expected to strike it down. Instead we have vague statements that could have come from an elected’s staff.
In other words Greenpeace is trying to muddy the waters and hide their guilt by painting themselves as the victims of injustice?
How very original..
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Based on their "Meet the Committee" page, they look a bit more like they have a dog in this fight beyond simply adjudicating the case.
https://www.trialmonitors.org/meet-the-committee
Plenty of accomplished people there, but as a group "unbiased observers" isn't the first phrase that comes to mind.
Well, let's not get into this left-right thing because that could go back and forth forever. Especially in the current environment.
eg - "As an outsider, why is [the jury and judge] a credible institution over the monitors?"
We should all just give the legal experts time to look over the records of what happened, and assess why. From there, a consensus will likely emerge as to what happened during and before the trial. And the justice or injustice of the matter will present itself.
But you can't have a judge say one thing and some other single expert say another, and from those pieces of information decide anything of an authoritative nature. Our institutions just don't have that type of credibility any longer. This is the consequence of credibility crises for any society's steward classes.
It was a long slide getting here, decades actually. But I think we are firmly now at the point of the "credibility collapse" portion of the "credibility crisis".
related topic -- "Judge shopping" refers to the practice of litigants strategically filing lawsuits in court districts or divisions where they are likely to be assigned to a judge sympathetic to their cause, often exploiting structural quirks in the judiciary
Most state courts randomly assign you a judge so it's not that simple, in some cases you can target certain districts in certain states where there are less judges (like the Texas patent judge). This is a trial in North Dakota because that's where the protests happened. I doubt they had many options in a single jurisdiction. The fallback for this stuff is of course a circuit court appeal.
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Because sometimes corruption happens.
They're a bunch of lifetime activists who spun up an authoritative sounding NGO that has done literally nothing else, but yeah muh corruption.
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In America, just about anything is more cridble than our "justice" system.
Why should I care what they think? Seriously, I'm so tired of seeing XYZ totally real and credentialed expert non government organization pop up in weird appeals to authority. They couldn't even be bothered to monitor any other trials for this one, this looks to be the only thing they've ever done.
My non-profit Analyzing the HN Posts (just created today) has verified that this is 100% real.
And a statement from legal experts monitoring this group https://pastebin.com/EEsEXbcz
Apparently, according to this source, trial monitors.org is a fake organization. There is some evidence that this is a credible accusation.
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I've been really fascinated by Donziger for a while:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger
It's a great story that documents the shifting winds of legal systems across continents.
My takeaway: there is zero consistency or absolute truth in any legal system.
"Human rights campaigners called Chevron's actions an example of a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP)"
"Chevron requested that the case be tried in Ecuador and, in 2002, the US court dismissed the plaintiffs case based on forum non conveniens and ruled that Ecuador had jurisdiction. The US court exacted a promise from Chevron that it would accept the decision of the Ecuadorian courts."
"A provincial Ecuadorean court found Chevron guilty in 2011 and awarded the plaintiffs $18 billion in damages. The decision was affirmed by three appellate courts including Ecuador's highest court, the National Court of Justice, although the damages were reduced to $9.5 billion."
But now, *Ecuador must pay Chevron* for damages:
"In 2018, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled that the $9.5 billion judgment in Ecuador was marked by fraud and corruption and "should not be recognised or enforced by the courts of other States." The amount Ecuador must pay to Chevron to compensate for damages is yet to be determined. The panel also stated that the corruption was limited to one judge, not the entire Ecuadorean legal system."
> they're like 90% left-wing activists
I'm not sure that's an accurate description. Are "Human Rights" inherently left-wing? Is environmental protection inherently left-wing? Is political corruption inherently right wing?
This is of legal experts each with 30+ years of experience in the fields with which this trial is concerned (environmentalism, corruption, humans rights abuses).
Perhaps anti-oil activists would have been a better term. That seems more plainly true to me.
They might or might not have had more valid cases in their respective pasts. But it doesn't seem right to me to term themselves "trial monitors" when they seem pretty plainly biased for one side of the trial. It would be more okay if they had some pro-oil attorneys on their board too, or called themselves "Greenpeace Defenders" or something.
I know, it's hardly the first or the most egregious case of deceptive naming out there. But it's still worth calling out in my opinion, especially when it it still, at the time of this writing, on the top of the HN thread about this, described as if they were unbiased legal experts.
Greenpeace should just do a Texas Two Step. Works for heavy industry.