United States v. Joel Andrew Wyatt, AKA "Lupine" Rebecca Kay Smith

Joel A. Wyatt and Rebecca Kay Smith (collectively “defendants”) appeal their convictions' for (1) using, or aiding and abetting the use of, a hazardous or injurious device on federal land" with the intent to obstruct a timber harvest; and (2) maintaining an unauthorized structure on National Forest land. We have jurisdiction under ; 28 U.S.C. § 1291 . We consider below whether 18 U.S.C. § 1864 (a), which in part prohibits the use of hazardous or injurious devices on federal land with the intent to obstruct or harass the harvesting of timber, is unconstitutionally vague as applied here to ‘ visible and unmodified ropes strung above a proposed helicopter landing site. We conclude the statute is not unconstitutionally vague as applied, and thus we affirm.

FACTS

On July 8, 2002, defendants Wyatt and Smith, members of Wild Rockies Earth First!, ascended and occupied separate elevated platforms in two trees as part of a “tree-sitting” protest in the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana. Smith’s platform was forty-five feet up in a tree, and Wyatt’s platform was eighty to ninety feet up in a tree. Defendants occupied the platforms for several weeks to protest logging. The protest site…