protests against certain parcels: [T]wo months prior to this auction, . . . a congressional report . . . by the House committee on public lands[] stated that it had become common practice for the BLM to take volunteers from the oil and gas industry to process those permits. The oil industry was paying people specifically to volunteer for the industry that was supposed to be regulating it, and it was to those industry staff that I would have been appealing. DeChristopher also tried to rely on a selective prosecution defense, citing "political machinations" behind the indictment and requesting information from federal prosecutors on instances in which individuals or companies reneged on bids for public land but were not prosecuted. Judge Benson denied that request as well. DeChristopher was convicted on both felony counts. Sentencing In his pre-sentencing statement, DeChristopher said: [The prosecutor] wrote that 'The rule of law is the bedrock of our civilized society, not acts of "civil disobedience" committed in the name of the cause of the day'. That's an especially ironic statement when he is representing the United States of America, a place where the rule of law was created through acts of civil disobedience. Since those bedrock acts of civil disobedience by our founding fathers, the rule of law in this country has continued to grow closer to our shared higher moral code through the civil disobedience that drew attention to legalized injustice. The U.S. Attorney's office had also argued that "a federal prison term here will deter others from entering a path of criminal behavior." DeChristopher responded: Judge Benson imposed a sentence of two years in prison and a $10,000 fine, saying that were it not for his "continuing trail of statements" post-auction, DeChristopher might have avoided prosecution and prison. According to the judge, "The offense itself, with all apologies to people actually in the auction itself, wasn't that bad." The sentencing was followed by protests in Salt Lake City, where 26 people were arrested, and other U.S. cities. Incarceration DeChristopher was initially held at Federal Correctional Institution, Herlong and was later transferred to Federal Correctional Institution, Englewood. According to a Peaceful Uprising press release, in March 2012 DeChristopher was moved from a minimum security camp to a restrictive "special housing unit" because an email he sent to a friend contained the word "threaten," triggering an alert from the inmate correspondence monitoring system. DeChristopher