Plea deal lets Stein avoid jail time over oil protest
BISMARCK, N.D. — A North Dakota judge on Wednesday accepted a plea agreement that spares former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein any jail time for protesting the Dakota Access oil pipeline nearly a year ago.
Judge Gail Hagerty accepted a plea deal in which Stein pleaded guilty to misdemeanor criminal mischief and prosecutors dropped a misdemeanor criminal trespass charge.
Stein will be on unsupervised probation for about six months and must pay $250 in fees. She had faced a maximum punishment of two months in jail and $3,000 in fines. Stein did not respond to phone and email messages seeking comment. Morton County Assistant State’s Attorney Brian Grosinger also could not be reached.
Stein was charged for spray-painting a bulldozer at a construction site last September. She told the Associated Press in March that she was willing to go jail but that’s “not my preference, obviously.”
Stein’s running mate, Ajamu Baraka, who faced similar charges, got the same deal Wednesday.
The pipeline built by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners on June 1 began moving oil through South Dakota and Iowa to a distribution point in Illinois, though Indian tribes who fear environmental harm are still fighting the project in court.
Stein was at a construction site where authorities said equipment was vandalized. She issued a statement at the time admitting to spray-painting the words “I approve this message” on the blade of a bulldozer to protest that it “had been used to destroy sacred burial sites of the Standing Rock Sioux.”