Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

‘Terrorist Motive’ Sent A Climate Activist To Prison For 25 Years. Appeals Court Says Not So Fast.

Wikimedia Commons/Public/Joe Gratz

A federal appeals court tossed the 25-year prison sentence of a climate activist convicted of shooting energy infrastructure in North and South Dakota, finding that a lower court improperly increased his sentence based on an alleged “terrorist motive.”

A three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Canadian national Cameron Smith’s sentence Monday and sent the case back to federal district court in North Dakota for resentencing after finding an error in the calculation of Smith’s advisory sentencing guidelines.

“A desire for public attention does not without more establish a motive to intimidate or coerce those who reach or watch the news,” the panel wrote in their Monday opinion. “The government suggested at oral argument that Smith hoped for others to ‘rise up’ and join his climate activism, but a motive to recruit followers is not a motive to intimidate and coerce.”

The panel included Chief Judge Steven Colloton, Judge Raymond Gruender and Judge Jonathan A. Kobes. Colloton and Gruender are appointees of former President George W. Bush while Kobes is an appointee of President Donald Trump.

Smith pleaded guilty in September 2024 to two counts of destruction of an energy facility stemming from separate attacks in South Dakota in 2022 and North Dakota in 2023, according to the Department of Justice.

In March 2025, U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor, a Trump appointee, sentenced Smith to 150 months on each of the two counts, resulting in a total sentence of 25 years. The judge had found at the time that Smith’s crimes met the definition of “terrorism.”

“We were all stunned by the sentence initially imposed, and we are grateful that the Eighth Circuit validated our argument that Mr. Smith clearly was not a ‘terrorist’ by any definition of that word,” Smith’s lawyer Doug Passon told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement. “Terrorism sentencing enhancements  have been applied too broadly in courts across the nation and used as a cudgel to radically enhance sentences of anyone who engaged in conduct deemed to be motivated by political or other ideology.”

“That’s a dangerous road to travel, and as the Eighth Circuit recognized, merely having a point of view does not make one a terrorist,” Passon emphasized.

Traynor had based the sentencing increase in part on evidence that Smith wanted his attacks to receive news coverage and had apparently associated himself with Extinction Rebellion, a group an investigator described as a “climate change activist group,” according to the appeals court’s opinion.

Passon noted that at resentencing “we intend to request a time-served sentence, which actually would constitute a sentence consistent with what the Federal Sentencing Guidelines called for in the absence of the draconian and unwarranted terrorism enhancement.”

Smith fired multiple rounds from a high-powered rifle into equipment at the Wheelock electrical substation near Ray, North Dakota, in May 2023, causing more than $100,000 in damage and disrupting electrical service, according to DOJ.

He similarly fired at a transformer and pump station along the Keystone Pipeline in South Dakota in July 2022, causing more than $100,000 in damage and disrupting pipeline operations.

Law enforcement tied Smith to the North Dakota attack after officers found a vehicle near the substation and eventually recovered two duffel bags containing firearms and ammunition consistent with shell casings found at the scene, according to the Eighth Circuit’s opinion.

Smith attacked the energy facilities and spray-painted environmental symbols in an effort to pressure residents of North and South Dakota into taking action on “”climate change,” federal prosecutors argued, according to the opinion. Smith sought media attention to reach a larger audience and pressure the populations served by the targeted energy companies.