Supreme Court refuses appeal by lawyer Steven Donziger, who was jailed for contempt of court over pollution lawsuit against Chevron by people in Ecuador.
"In this country, judges have no more power to initiate a prosecution of those who come before them than prosecutors have to sit in judgment of those they charge," Gorsuch wrote.The other justices who voted to deny Donziger a hearing of his appeal did not explain their decision in writing, as is customary.
"At the company's insistence, the court transferred the litigation to Ecuador," Gorsuch wrote in his five-page dissent.The plaintiffs in the lawsuit were awarded $9.5 billion from Chevron by a judge in Ecuador. Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Kaplan in a nearly 500-page ruling in 2014 wrote that Donziger and Ecuadorian lawyers "corrupted" the lawsuit in Ecuador.
After Donziger failed to fully comply with that order, Kaplan held him in criminal contempt of court, and referred that case to the U.S. Attorney's Office, which normally prosecutes such matters.Kaplan then appointed three lawyers as special prosecutors and held trial without a jury for Donziger, whom he then convicted and sentenced to jail.
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