Dismissal of Eco Activists’ Criminal Charges Overtly Political
“Prosecutors aren’t elected to make public policy.”
By Jeff Jacoby
[W]hen Sam Sutter, the district attorney for Bristol County, announced [recently] that he would drop the criminal charges pending against two global-warming activists for illegally blocking a shipment of coal to a power plant in Somerset, Mass., he was exercising prosecutorial discretion – something DAs do every day.
Clearly, that’s not why it made news. Nor is it why Sutter is being hailed – wrongly – as a hero on the environmental left.
Sutter made his announcement moments before Jay O'Hara and Ken Ward were to go on trial for their stunt in Somerset, for which they faced charges that included conspiracy to commit a crime, disorderly conduct, and negligent operation of a motor vessel. Conviction could have meant up to nine months’ imprisonment. The defendants didn’t deny their actions; they said they were willing to go to jail in order to protest the burning of coal and what they regard as the government’s “terrible” climate policies. …
But instead of proceeding to a jury trial, Sutter dropped the charges at the last minute. O'Hara and Ward were merely required to pay $4,000 as civil restitution to the town of Somerset for its costs. …
Sutter went way beyond the ethical bounds of prosecutorial discretion. He announced, in a manner calculated to attract maximum publicity, that he was letting O'Hara and Ward off the hook because he agrees with their political views.
“Climate change is one of the gravest crises our planet has ever faced,” Sutter declaimed to a cheering crowd outside Fall River District Court. “In my humble opinion, the political leadership on this issue has been sorely lacking…. This symbolizes our commitment, at the Bristol County district attorney’s office, to take a leadership role on this issue.” …
The DA’s behavior was worse than disgraceful, it was dangerous. It was an egregious abuse of his authority as a prosecutor: not that he dropped the charges against two lawbreaking protesters, but that he did so because he wants to promote their controversial cause – and to promote his own “leadership” on the issue. …
It may be tempting for those who see climate change as a crisis to applaud Sutter’s overtly political decision. Would they feel the same way about an anti-abortion DA who refused to prosecute demonstrators for blockading a Planned Parenthood clinic? Would they cheer a prosecutor whose antipathy to Islam led him to drop the charges against trespassers preventing construction of a mosque, and then to trumpet his “leadership” in doing so?
Prosecutors aren’t elected to make public policy – not on fossil fuels, or civil rights, or abortion, or anything else. Their job is to enforce the law, not to enact it. What Sutter did was contemptible, not commendable, and no one should have been cheering.
