Last year, activists from the organization No More Deaths were convicted of
“knowingly littering” by leaving water bottles for migrants crossing the U.S. border.

Last week, that conviction was overturned. From Colorlines:

Dan Millis, a volunteer with the humanitarian aid group No More Deaths, was convicted in a federal court of littering when he and three other volunteers left water for border crossers in 2008 along a section of the Arizona desert that was a designated wildlife refuge. He faced a $5,000 fine and six months in jail for refusing to pay the $125 ticket.

On Thursday the Ninth Circuit overturned his conviction and ruled 2-1 that the statute was vague enough such that water did not constitute garbage. The dissenting opinion was written by Judge Jay Bybee, a former Bush administration assistant attorney general who co-wrote that administration’s torture memos. Bybee wrote: “Leaving plastic bottles in a wildlife refuge is littering under any ordinary, common meaning of the word.”

The attorneys for the organization, when defending their clients, were not allowed to say why the organization was leaving the water bottles out in the dessert and the judge made it clear that this one reversal did not protect the organization or other organizations from future criminal charges for doing the same thing.

This comes at a time when deaths at the border are at an all time high.

Image Via / Klearchos Kapoutsis Flickr