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Greenpeace Acquitted

This just in by e-mail from Law Professor Michael R. Masinter (Nova Southeastern University):

Late this afternoon, a Miami federal trial judge granted a judgment of acquittal to Greenpeace in the government's unprecedented prosecution of an advocacy organization for the nonviolent civil disobedience of its members. Greenpeace was indicted for the offense once known as sailor mongering, more specifically, for boarding a ship as it was "about to arrive at its destination" in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2279, and for conspiracy to violate that statute because its members boarded the ship to protest its cargo of unlawfully harvested mahogany.

As best as I can tell the court granted an MJOA because there was insufficient evidence from which the jury could find that the ship was "about to arrive at the place of her destination, before her actual arrival and before she has been completely moored," the actual language of the statute, or because the statute as applied to the facts shown (the ship was three miles from port) was unconstitutionally vague for lack of fair warning that it could apply three miles offshore.

An aside from the trial: Yesterday when the trial began, the government sought to use as a demonstrative aid in its opening statement a computer generated graphic to show the jury how big the ship was; the graphic consisted of 1) the tallest office building in Miami, 2) a Boeing 737, and 3) the ship. The court prohibited its use. The ACLU filed an amicus in support of Greenpeace

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