Landmark Win for 5 Extinction Rebellion Activists Who Used Necessity Defense

The so-called “Zenith Five” in court. “Zenith Energy Corporation, and the city’s inability to shut it down, is the poster child for what is wrong with our system,” defendant Margaret Butler said in a statement Thursday. @RickRappaport2020 Environmentalists celebrated a landmark victory in the “fight for a habitable future” after a Portland, Oregon jury on Thursday refused to convict five Extinction Rebellion activists — including valve turner Ken Ward — who presented the climate necessity defense at their trial for blockading a train track used by Zenith Energy to transport crude oil. The activists emphasized that the win was only partial because the criminal trespassing case ended in a mistrial rather than a full acquittal. Just one of six jurors voted to convict the activists while the five others voted to acquit. But Ward said the jury’s refusal to convict even when presented with video evidence of the trespassing “is a vindication of our call for climate activists to use a climate necessity defense,” which states that it is at times justified to break the law to combat the planetary crisis. “When citizens are told the truth about the climate crisis—which is the first of Extinction Rebellion’s demands—they take […]

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