This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated.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.
"Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. ... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
— Frederick Douglass
If there was any doubt that Tim DeChristopher should be cast as a martyr to his cause, U.S. District Judge Dee Benson's abominable decision to send the young man to prison has erased it.
Many believed DeChristopher merited some punishment for submitting bogus bids on gas and oil leases on public land. After he was convicted in March, we were among those who called for nothing more than probation, if that. But, now that Benson has spelled out his reasons for sending DeChristopher to prison for two years, we are convinced this charade of a prosecution was bogus from the beginning.
DeChristopher was not prosecuted because he caused harm to the government, to energy developers or to taxpayers, but because he was widely praised for his bold effort to draw attention to a crisis that has been largely ignored by our government. The lease auction that put some precious public lands on the block to be sold for development of fossil fuel energy was later deemed by courts and the federal government to have been illegal. In simple terms, DeChristopher was right.
And, by his own admission, Benson punished him for pointing out something that conservatives do not want to hear: Human-caused climate change and government negligence in addressing its consequences are threatening the globe.
Following the sentencing, the judge acknowledged that DeChristopher's act of civil disobedience — for that's precisely what it was — was "not that bad" and should not have prompted a prison term, and possibly no prosecution at all. What sent DeChristopher to prison was his brave exercise of his constitutional right to free speech. He did not apologize, and why should he, when his act later proved laudable?
Benson's sentence does not reflect the values of justice and fair play that Americans hold dear, but rather those of repressive regimes that imprison dissenters.
DeChristopher was charged for his actions, not his words, a distinction that would not escape a first-year law student, let alone a judge who, unlike Benson, would not choose to make a mockery of the First Amendment he is sworn to uphold.