Environmental lawyer Steven Donziger speaks to his supporters outside of the Southern District of New York courthouse in Manhattan prior to being sentenced to six months in prison on October 1, 2021. Photo: Ryland West/ALM

Steven Donziger, the disbarred attorney who helped win an $8.6 billion oil-pollution judgment in Ecuador against Chevron, was sentenced Friday afternoon to six months in prison on criminal contempt-of-court charges that sprung from a civil case Chevron launched against him after it lost the Ecuador judgment. The six-month sentence was the maximum prison term that Donziger, 60 and a Harvard Law graduate, was allowed to be given, under statutory law, for the six misdemeanor counts he'd faced. And in an extraordinary hearing that lasted through the morning on Friday, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska of the Southern District of New York made abundantly clear that she believed Donziger had purposely defied post-judgment court orders for years in the underlying U.S.-based civil fraud case Chevron had leveled against him, which in 2014 he lost. "Given Mr. Donziger's repeated refusal to obey court orders," said Preska during a contentious and at-times emotional sentencing hearing inside Manhattan federal court, "it seems that only the proverbial 2-by-4 to the eyes will instill in him any respect for the law." To Preska, a senior judge who over the last two years has largely denied each Donziger legal motion and plea for release from extended home confinement, the case before her was about a seasoned and well-educated attorney flagrantly spurning court orders as he, in her view, put himself above the law. To Donziger and to his famed defense lawyers, Ronald Kuby and Martin Garbus—all three men addressed Preska on Friday morning—the contempt litigation was an extension of a crusade they maintain oil giant Chevron has orchestrated against Donziger since 2011, when the then-lawyer helped win the $8.6 billion judgment while representing 30,000 Indigenous Ecuadorians whose Amazionian land had been severely damaged by oil-drilling waste. Donziger and his high-powered pro bono team have maintained in the media and in court that the fix has been in against Donziger, and that the massive energy company may have even unduly influenced the two judges who have been deciding his fate for some nine years: Southern District of New York U.S. Judge Lewis Kaplan in the fraud case in which Chevron charged that Donziger had bribed judges and ghostwritten a judgment to win the $8.6 billion; and Preska herself, who was hand-selected by Kaplan to be the jurist in a criminal matter brought by Kaplan after Donziger refused some of his orders, including that Donziger produce to a forensic-inspection expert his computer and other electronic devices. Even on Thursday, the Donziger team's relentless nature had shown itself. The defense asked Preska to weigh in her sentencing an opinion by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions that said Donziger's home confinement of more than two years during a misdemeanor case violated international human rights law. "The exceptional length of pre-trial detention," the U.N. group said, "exceeds over four times the maximum possible penalty" of six months in prison in the case. But to Preska, the Donziger team's "fixed" or rigged accusation was nothing more than an obfuscation of his wrongdoing as a lawyer breaking the rule of law. Moreover, she told a packed courtroom and hundreds of others listening to the hearing over telephonic feed, the repeated contention from Donziger's team that his criminal prosecution was really about Chevron's alleged polluting of the Amazon missed the point, too. "This court is wholly unconcerned with the debate over any responsibility Chevron may bear" for environmental damage in the Amazon and the alleged harm to the land and its people, including some of whom contracted cancer. "This about the rule of law," Preska said. "I'd like to note the well-known principle that the ends do not justify the means," the judge also said. "It is clear that Mr. Donziger does not regret what he did, and did not do, before Judge Kaplan" in the civil fraud case. Donziger, when he earlier had stood before Preska and the courtroom, said, "To be clear, I accept full responsibility for all of my actions that have led to this moment." He then said, "It is my position that ultimately the appellate court will decide whether what I did was ethical" in refusing certain Kaplan court orders such as turning over his computer while claiming it held attorney-privileged information between him and his Ecuadorian clients. "I chose to go into voluntary contempt" in the civil case, to be able to appeal Kaplan's orders, he told Preska, and "no lawyer in this country, as we understand it on our team, has ever been charged for such a course of action. "I am the first lawyer charged criminally, with contempt, for engaging in this course of action," he said. Donziger attorney Kuby also said in court that the defense will immediately seek emergency appellate review of Preska's sentencing. Donziger has no previous criminal record. Preska ordered that the ex-attorney and his team will have one week to get some type of emergency relief or stay. After that, she ruled, he must report to federal prison in New York City, most likely the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. A Chevron spokesman declined Friday to comment on the contempt-sentencing ruling. Donziger's sentencing caps a remarkable turn of events for the veteran-but-now-ex-lawyer. He has become a famed environmental and human-rights lawyer over some 30 years of battling Chevron in courtrooms in the U.S. and Ecuador. His key moment came in 2001 in the decades-long legal saga with Chevron. That year, Ecuador's high court awarded the $8.6 billion judgment to the 30,000 Ecuadorians he'd helped to represent. Their health and Amazonian rainforest land had been damaged by vast oil-drilling waste allegedly created by Chevron's predecessor, Texaco, beginning in the 1960s. Their legal action centered on demanded cleanup and money for those allegedly affected, including those people allegedly made ill. Chevron had argued, in turn—and unsuccessfully—that it wasn't Texaco but another oil producer that was responsible for the un-remediated pollution in the Amazon. And after the high court awarded victory to the Ecuadorians, Donziger, as their lead lawyer, was set to take home more than $100 million in contingency fees. But Chevron fired back, launching a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act case against Donziger in Manhattan federal court before Kaplan, arguing the Ecuadorian judgment was based on fraud that included Donziger allegedly bribing Ecuadorian judges. In 2014, Kaplan issued a 485-page decision in Chevron's favor. As part of it, he ruled the $8.6 billion judgment could not be collected on. To date, no Ecuadorian judgment money has been collected. Even before Kaplan had ruled—and especially after—Donziger and his lawyers and supporters have complained that Kaplan denied Donziger's requests to have his RICO trial be decided by a jury. They've also long contended Kaplan, a former defense lawyer for tobacco companies and a member of the conservative-leaning Federalist Society, to which Chevron has contributed money, is biased in favor of the company. After Kaplan's civil fraud ruling in Manhattan, which in 2015 was affirmed on legal grounds by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Donziger and Chevron's legal warfare didn't cease, but instead dragged on in post-Kaplan judgment battles. As various post-judgment struggles unspooled before Kaplan, he ruled Donziger owes to Chevron millions of dollars in fees, costs and penalties. In subsequent efforts to extract the sums from Donziger, Chevron accused the lawyer of hiding money and information that would help it recover several million dollars. In 2018, Kaplan, in turn, ordered Donziger to turn over his cellphone and computer for data harvesting and inspection. Donziger refused, claiming his devices would reveal years of attorney-client privileged communications he'd had with Ecuadorian clients. Kaplan eventually held Donziger in civil contempt, and on July 31, 2019, he decided to charge Donziger with various criminal contempt counts, most of which mirrored the civil-contempt charges. Since then Donziger and his team have complained that Preska was hand-picked by Kaplan to be the judge in Donziger's criminal contempt case, and have alleged she has been a Federalist Society member and is biased. They've also complained Donziger was forced to have a bench trial before Preska, not a jury trial. Last year Donziger was disbarred in New York state.