The case was heard by US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who determined that the ruling of the Ecuadorian court could not be enforced in the US because it was procured by fraud, bribery, and racketeering activities.

Donziger was placed under house arrest in August 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of criminal contempt of court, which arose during his appeal against Kaplan's RICO decision, when he refused to turn over electronic devices he owned to Chevron's forensics experts.

[7] In September 2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that the pre-trial detention imposed on Donziger was illegal and called for his release.

His first job was in the United Press International bureau in Managua, after which he freelanced in Nicaragua for The Fort Lauderdale News, the Toronto Star, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The book described the role of media in increasing fear of crime, racial injustice in the criminal justice system and argues against mandatory minimum sentences.

[20] He visited Ecuador in 1993, where he says he saw "what honestly looked like an apocalyptic disaster," including children walking barefoot down oil-covered roads and jungle lakes filled with oil.

[16] In 1993, after he visited Ecuador, Donziger and other attorneys brought a class-action lawsuit in New York against Texaco on behalf of over 30,000 farmers and Indigenous people from the Amazon region.

Since the plaintiffs had no money, Donziger, with FDA support, funded the case by selling shares to investors, offering a small part of any eventual settlement.

[29] Chevron stated that a scene in the documentary film Crude presented at the Sundance Film Festival showed an environmental scientist present at a legal strategy meeting of plaintiffs' lawyers; the same scientist was later appointed by the Ecuadorian court as an ostensibly impartial expert to write a report on technical issues, but the scene was cut from the theatrical release.

On May 6, 2010, federal judge Lewis Kaplan sided with a petition submitted by Chevron and ruled that Berlinger turn over more than 600 hours of original footage created during the film's production.

"[33] In 2011, Chevron filed a civil RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) suit against Donziger in New York City, accusing him of bribing an Ecuadorean judge, ghostwriting the damages judgment against it, and "fixing" scientific studies.

Chevron stated that it wanted to focus "the RICO case on obtaining injunctive relief against the furtherance of Donziger's extortionate scheme against the company".

[23] In 2014, Kaplan ruled that the judgment in Ecuador was invalid because Donziger had achieved it through offenses against legal ethics, including racketeering, extortion, wire fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, judicial bribery, coercion, witness tampering, and arranging for expert's reports to be ghostwritten.

"[38] The case relied in large part on the testimony of Alberto Guerra, a former Ecuadorean judge whom Chevron had moved to the United States from Ecuador in 2013 for safety reasons.

[41][42] Donziger was suspended from practicing law in New York in July 2018, based on rulings by US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in the Chevron case.

[44] As part of the appeal process after the initial ruling, Kaplan ordered Donziger to submit his computer, phones, and other electronic devices to a neutral forensic expert to search for his assets and other evidence relating to the Ecuador judgment.

The contempt charges allege that Donziger failed to comply with Kaplan's orders to submit his electronic devices and passport and to drop attempts to collect on the award against Chevron.

[19][34][45] In a move described as "virtually unprecedented" by The Intercept, Kaplan appointed a private law firm, Seward & Kissel, to prosecute Donziger after the Southern District Court of New York declined to do so.

Preska had served on the advisory board of the Federalist Society, to which Chevron (along with other large American companies like Verizon, Google, Facebook, Time Warner, and others) had contributed at least $50,000 in 2012.

[22][49] Citing coronavirus concerns, Donziger's fourth lawyer, Lauren Regan, requested in late October that the civil trial be rescheduled for a third time.

[63] In January 2022, The Nation wrote that it had obtained documents showing that Chevron, its law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and the private prosecutor appointed by Kaplan to prosecute Donziger, had collaborated in conducting the criminal contempt case.

[68] In 2014, Joe Nocera wrote that Notre Dame law professor and human rights attorney Doug Cassel stated that "Donziger disserved his clients and his cause” by his conduct during the Ecuadorian trial.

"[69] In 2018, an editorial in The Wall Street Journal claimed that "Donziger's attempted looting of Chevron for spurious environmental crimes in Ecuador ranks among the biggest legal scams in history".

Lawyer's Rights Watch Canada points out that Donziger has been under house arrest for longer than the six-month maximum sentence that contempt of court carries.

[50] Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson criticized Chevron and Kaplan, stating that the corruption and bribery charges were a "means to protect the oil company from having to answer for its degradation of the Amazon".

[20][71] In a March 2020 article in The Nation, James North wrote that "[t]he mainstream press has largely ignored the legal attacks against Donziger, but Chevron's counteroffensive could endanger human rights and environmental work around the world".

[19] In an October 2021 article entitled "The Anonymous Executioners of the Corporate State", Hedges described the prosecution of Donziger as a "show trial" similar to those carried out by "tyrannies of the past", and compared his case to that of Julian Assange, saying "they are designed to send a message.

"[47] In July 2020, Simon Taylor, director of Global Witness said that the treatment of Donziger "is intended to intimidate the rest of us, to chill the work of other environmental and corporate accountability advocates".

[74] On April 27, 2021, Democrats Jim McGovern, Cori Bush, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Jamie Raskin wrote a letter calling for oversight by Attorney General Merrick Garland out of "deep concerns that the unprecedented nature of Mr. Donziger's pending legal case is tied to his previous work against Chevron.

It quoted an interview given by Donziger to Breakthrough News in which he said, "No matter what you think of me or Judge Kaplan, isn't it newsworthy that an American lawyer is under house arrest for two years on a misdemeanor?