On Wednesday, April 11, in Idaho’s First District Court, Judge Robert Caldwell dismissed an infraction for failure to use a vehicle safety restraint imposed on organizer Helen Yost of the Moscow, Idaho-based climate change activist group, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT).  Idaho State Police (ISP) Corporal Ronald Sutton charged Yost with the seat belt infraction and a misdemeanor of resisting and obstructing an officer early on August 27, 2011, when she subsequently refused to identify herself, citing Idaho codes regarding passenger IDs and seat belts in non-moving vehicles (see the attached Early Summary of Megaload Monitor Case).

The incident occurred as Sutton covered his regular patrol route on Highway 95, south of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, just before midnight on August 26.  When he noticed a Toyota 4Runner parked for a few minutes near milepost 421, he approached its four female occupants who had been traveling for about an hour in the vicinity of an ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil tar sands transport and convoy of a dozen pilot trucks, flagger vehicles, and state trooper cars.  On the previous night, six WIRT activists had sat, stood, laid down, and effectively blocked the same 200-foot-long, 400,000-pound, two-lane-wide “megaload” for a half hour as it traversed a gauntlet of 150 protesters in downtown Moscow, Idaho. Continue reading →