Lucy Lawless Pleads Guilty To Trespassing During Greenpeace Protest, Faces Jail Time

Xena the Warrior Princess could soon be heading to jail. Actress Lucy Lawless, along with seven Greenpeace activists, plead guilty to trespassing aboard a Shell-owned Oil drilling ship during a protest in February.

According to Fox News, Lawless, Jan Raoni Hammer, Mike Ross Buchanan, Shayne Panayiotis Comino, Vivienne Rachel Hadlow, Shai Sebastian Naides, Zach Steven Penman and Ilai Amir will reappear in court this September for sentencing.

According to NJ.com, Lawless and her fellow Greenpeace activists staged a sit-in on top of a Shell-owned drilling ship in order to keep the ship from leaving for Alaska. Lawless stayed on top of the 175-foot drilling tower for more than three days.

Lawless said:

“I think we’ve helped kick off a great movement… We want to tell [those responsible for deep sea oil drilling] absolutely under no circumstances is this a good idea. They are robbing our children of their birth right to a clean and healthy planet and they know it.”

The NZ Herald reports that the Greenpeace group was originally charged with burglary, but today the charge was amended to a lesser charge of unlawfully being on a ship.

Protester Rachel Hadlow read a statement in court, saying:

“We stand by our actions in occupying the Noble Discoverer. Our actions and those that have followed since against Shell-contracted vessels have brought the world’s attention to Shell’s insane plans and have brought 475,000 people to lend their names to stopping Shell’s drilling in the pristine Arctic… Like the Arctic, New Zealand is also under threat from extreme frontier oil drilling. Companies like Petrobras, Shell and Anadarko are planning to start exploratory drilling in some of New Zealand’s most isolated, precious and exposed waters, possibly as soon as this summer…. Because of this threat, we hope that our actions will inspire all of those people who care about the health of the planet – local jobs, wildlife, our ability to eat fish from the sea, and our way of life here in New Zealand – to join Greenpeace, iwi and all the groups working alongside us, and make sure that this country, and the Arctic, is never faced with an oil disaster, and that runaway climate change does not rob our children and grandchildren of their future.”

According to the Huffington Post, Lucy Lawless and the rest of the Greenpeace protesters face a maximum of three years in prison.