The climate activist is ordered to pay restitution for his role in the nation’s biggest takeover of fossil fuel infrastructure
Leonard Higgins, 66, is not going to prison for his role in the most expansive takeover of fossil fuel infrastructure ever attempted in the United States.
On March 20, a district court judge in Chouteau County, Mont., handed Higgins a three-year deferred sentence, along with a $4,280 bill for restitution and court fees.
It’s welcome news to Higgins, who was convicted of felony criminal mischief and misdemeanor trespass in November for crimes he traveled from Oregon to Montana to commit in 2016.
Higgins and four other climate activists, known as the “Valve Turners,” stopped the flow of Alberta Tar Sands oil from coming into the U.S. when they manually shut off five pipelines in four states bordering Canada the morning of Oct. 11, 2016.
The prosecutor in Higgins’ case was seeking a 10-year sentence, with all but 60 days suspended, for the felony and a six-month sentence, with all but 30 days suspended, for the misdemeanor. The prosecution also sought $25,630 in restitution to cover the damage caused to Enbridge Inc.’s property (Formerly Spectra Energy), as well as labor associated with Higgins’ actions.
Higgins, a retired state IT manager and lifelong Oregonian, said he arrived in court with nothing more than his driver’s license, his insurance card and some cash for commissary in his pockets, expecting he would be going to jail for anywhere from 30 days to several years.
“I’m finally starting to wrap my arms around the fact that I’m not in jail,” he told Street Roots as he traveled by train to Eugene three days after his sentencing hearing.
The presiding judge, Daniel Bouche, was not available for comment. However Higgins’ fellow activist and accomplice Ken Ward reported live from the courthouse via social media that Bouche said he handed down a light sentence because the crime was nonviolent in nature, and Higgins had no prior criminal record.
The Valve Turners’ synchronized pipeline shutdown was a highly orchestrated and publicized event, with documentarians on site at each valve to film the closure. A command center in Seattle made calls to each of the energy companies that operate the pipelines moments in advance, giving them the opportunity to turn off the valves remotely before locks were broken and manual shut-off cranks were engaged. In each case, the company declined.
All five of the Valve Turners live in Oregon and Washington, and all had become increasingly frustrated with the failure of the U.S. government to take actions to steer the country away from the impending climate catastrophe.
The activists wanted to escalate their actions to bring more attention to the climate crisis. Part of their plan all along was to take their cases to trial using the necessity defense. This defense strategy can be used when a judge allows a jury to consider it in their deliberation. To qualify for this defense, the crime committed must meet the following criteria:
• The harm that would have resulted from obeying the law would have significantly exceeded the harm caused by breaking the law.
• There was no legal alternative.
• The respondent must be in danger of imminent physical harm.
• There must be a direct causal connection between breaking the law and preventing the harm.
The Valve Turners lined up a host of scientists to testify about the effects of Earth’s climate crisis and prepared to demonstrate how they’d been advocating for action on climate legally for years without any meaningful result.
But judges in three out of the four states where the Valve Turners were arrested, including in Montana, denied their request to use this defense.
In June, a Skagit County, Wash., jury found Ward guilty of second-degree burglary, and he was sentenced to two days in jail with credit for time served, along with 30 days of community service and six months’ probation for shutting off Kinder-Morgan’s Trans-Mountain pipeline in Anacortes.
In February in North Dakota, Michael Foster, a mental health therapist who shut off TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline in Walhalla, received the harshest sentence – three years in prison with two years deferred – after being found guilty of misdemeanor trespass, felony criminal mischief and conspiracy to commit criminal mischief. He was taken directly into custody from his sentencing hearing, and will have his first parole hearing in May.
But in Minnesota, Judge Robert Tiffany ruled that Valve Turners Emily Johnston and Annette Klapstein would be allowed to argue the necessity defense during their trial, which is expected to begin as soon as this summer.
In an unrelated case, a judge in Washington has also ruled to allow the necessity defense in the case of the Rev. George Taylor, who in September occupied train tracks in Spokane in an effort to block oil trains with the activist group Veterans for Peace.
FURTHER READING: The necessity defense: Does saving the planet require civil disobedience?
If the necessity defense works in either of these cases, Higgins said, it would set a “huge precedent” for climate activists.
“It not only makes it more likely that activists are going to be able to use that defense and prevail with that defense in court; it also makes the activists who consider civil disobedience feel safer in taking the action,” he said. “I think it also undermines the repressive legislation that’s being proposed and passed in some states trying to equate pipeline or other kinds of fossil fuel infrastructure protest with terrorism.”
On March 27, a West Roxbury District Court judge in Massachusetts found that protesters who had interfered with pipeline construction in 2016 were “not responsible” for reasons of necessity. However, because their crimes had been downgraded to civil infractions, the case cannot be used as precedent in criminal court.
Higgins’ attorneys have filed an appeal in his case, primarily based on the judge’s denial of the necessity defense.
If Higgins follows the law and the terms of his probation, he can have the felony charge removed from his record after three years, according to the Chouteau County District Court clerk.
He said that while the sentence will influence his approach to climate activism moving forward, “because we have so little time to respond and have a chance of avoiding the worst, it won’t rule out civil disobedience.”
Email Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green at emily@streetroots.org . Follow her on Twitter @greenwrites .
Documentary screening The Hollywood Theater on Northeast Sandy Boulevard will screen “The Reluctant Radical,” a documentary about Leonard Higgins’ fellow Valve Turner Ken Ward, of Seattle, at 7:30 p.m. April 21 as part of Portland EcoFilm Festival.
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