This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
There were tears outside the courthouse and, it turns out, inside the jury room as well.
"It wasn't an easy decision," juror Fidel Martin told The Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday soon after he and 11 others voted to convict Tim DeChristopher of two felonies for placing bogus bids at a federal oil and gas lease auction. "There were some tears. There were some watery eyes."
Martin, sheltered from the rain in his red Nissan pickup, said the nearly five hours of deliberation was a difficult experience for the eight men and four women.
"We debated it a lot," said the West Jordan resident, who works for a mobile-satellite company. "It wasn't easy. It was very intense. After hearing the whole trial, you put the pieces together. ... It wasn't that he [DeChristopher] had plans to do it, but it was clear he disturbed the [bidding] process."
Jurors were not allowed to hear much testimony about DeChristopher's environmental views: how he believed climate change generated by fossil fuels will make the future unlivable. Neither did the judge permit him or his attorneys to tell them how another judge, after the auction, stalled these lease sales when environmental groups claimed they were given unlawfully scant review, or that, in 2009, new U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar shelved 77 of the leases, pending closer environmental scrutiny.
"A greater good was being served" by DeChristopher, said his friend Ashley Anderson, "and he wasn't allowed to argue that."
Britney Schultz, a young woman who traveled from Ohio to support DeChristopher in the Main Street protests, wept even before the verdict because, she said, the whole environmental community was on trial without a fair chance.
DeChristopher deserved to tell his whole story, she said. "You know that what he's saying is the truth, and you just hope the jury sees that."
U.S. Attorney for Utah Carlie Christensen said U.S. District Judge Dee Benson appropriately limited testimony.
The evidence presented at trial apparently did pain jurors who found no choice but to convict. Asked if some of them were uncomfortable with the guilty verdicts, Martin said "a couple of them were emotional about it."