Trudi Warner held up a placard outside a criminal court in London, which said "JURORS YOU HAVE AN ABSOLUTE RIGHT TO ACQUIT A DEFENDANT ACCORDING TO YOUR CONSCIENCE".
This reflected a legal principle celebrated in a plaque at the Old Bailey (Central Criminal Court in London), which says
Near this site WILLIAM PENN and WILLIAM MEAD were tried in 1670 for preaching to an unlawful assembly in Gracechurch Street. This tablet commemorates the courage and endurance of the jury, Thomas Vere, Edward Bushell and ten others, who refused to give a verdict against them although locked up without food for two nights; and were fined for their final verdict of Not Guilty. The case of these jurymen was reviewed on a writ of habeas corpus and Chief Justice Vaughan delivered the opinion of the Court which established the right of juries to give their verdict according to their convictions.(See Bushel's Case on Wikipedia).
The legal principles about a jury giving a "perverse acquittal" have been reaffirmed by the House of Lords in R v Wang [2005] UKHL 9 thus
12. ... [quoting DPP v Stonehouse [1978] AC 55] If the judge is satisfied that, on the evidence, the jury would not be justified in acquitting the accused and indeed that it would be perverse of them to do so, he has no power to pre-empt the jury's verdict by directing them to convict.
16. ... As it is, however, the acquittals of such high profile defendants as Ponting, Randle and Pottle have been quite as much welcomed as resented by the public, which over many centuries has adhered tenaciously to its historic choice that decisions on the guilt of defendants charged with serious crime should rest with a jury of lay people, randomly selected, and not with professional judges. [ This article describes the cases of Ponting, Randle and Pottle]. That the last word should rest with the jury remains, as Sir Patrick Devlin, writing in 1956, said (Hamlyn Lectures, pp 160, 162),"an insurance that the criminal law will conform to the ordinary man's idea of what is fair and just. If it does not, the jury will not be a party to its enforcement …. The executive knows that in dealing with the liberty of the subject it must not do anything which would seriously disturb the conscience of the average member of Parliament or of the average juryman. I know of no other real checks that exist today upon the power of the executive."
There was an application for permission to proceed against Ms Warner for contempt, the point being that she (allegedly) was "seeking to influence the jurors and in particular to acquit climate change activists, whether or not such acquittal would be in accordance with the trial judge's legal directions". Permission was refused (ie, Ms Warner was successful), see HM Solicitor General v Warner [2024] EWHC 918 (KB). David Allen Green has written an excellent article about this, The placard of Trudi Warner, in which he says
For the government, the rousing text of this judgment is even more unwelcome than the offending text on the original placard. For with this illiberal and misconceived application it has given the concept of jury equity more circulation than would ever have been achieved by Warner’s placard.
Jury equity is something that existed, and which a prudent government took notice of but did not shout about. But now, with this silly attempt to criminalise Warner, the existence of jury equity will be better known to those who do not read legal textbooks nor the walls of criminal courts. It will even feature in legal blogs.(which is the whole point of this website - to publicise stuff which others would prefer to remain hidden).
Another excellent article, by "BarristerBlogger" Matthew Scott, is I don’t stand with Trudi Warner, which was written before the judgment in the Trudi Warner case. I rather think the result of that case will have surprised him.
I've belatedly come across another article by Matthew, Are juries fair?, in which he says
There is also a disreputable argument that juries – by virtue of their ability to acquit “in accordance with their conscience” – are somehow indispensable guardians of our liberties: “the lamp that shows that freedom lives” to use Lord Devlin’s oft-quoted humbug. Oddly enough their equivalent ability to convict in defiance of both the law and the evidence is seldom mentioned.
The judgment in favour of Ms Warner discusses "jury equity" (which it explains as the power of the jury to give a verdict according to conscience) in paras 13 to 21; it includes the following points
This article, Trudi Warner victory – the right for juries to acquit on their conscience, summarises events to this point, mentioning several other cases also.
In Webster & Ors v The King [2026] EWCA Crim 9, the Court of Appeal (which was not bound by the decision in Trudi Warner's case) discussed Jury Equity in paras 45-59. Concerning posters with the same wording as that of Trudi Warner, and a judge's direction that these "misstated the law", the court discussed this in paragraphs 69-72. As far as I can understand what the Court said, it went to considerable effort to avoid saying whether they agreed with this or not. Comments welcome!
This judgment is discussed in How the UK government is trying to tackle juries who may acquit pro-Palestine activists on moral grounds
(Both this case and R v Wang went to appeal because the jury had been directed to return a verdict of Guilty.) The case mentioned there, R. v. Morgentaler [1988] 1 SCR 30, well illustrates the conflict in lawyers' minds about the issue of jury equity. (So this is an awfully long quote - sorry!). Starting near the bottom of page 76, we see27. It has since then been well established that under the system of justice we have inherited from England juries are not entitled as a matter of right to refuse to apply the law — but they do have the power to do so when their consciences permit of no other course.
28 The matter was put this way long ago by Lord Mansfield in R. v. Shipley (1784), 4 Dougl. 73, 99 E.R. 774, at p. 824 (cited by Dickson C.J. in R. v. Morgentaler, [1988] 1 S.C.R. 30, at p. 78):
It is the duty of the Judge, in all cases of general justice, to tell the jury how to do right, though they have it in their power to do wrong, which is a matter entirely between God and their own consciences.
In his book The Justice Game human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson records, about the trial of Randle and Pottle,Defence Counsel's Address to the Jury
In his concluding remarks to the jury at the trial of the appellants, defence counsel asserted:
The judge will tell you what the law is. He will tell you about the ingredients of the offence, what the Crown has to prove, what the defences may be or may not be, and you must take the law from him. But I submit to you that it is up to you and you alone to apply the law to this evidence and you have a right to say it shouldn't be applied.The burden of his argument was that the jury should not apply s. 251 if they thought that it was a bad law, and that, in refusing to apply the law, they could send a signal to Parliament that the law should be changed. Although my disposition of the appeal makes it unnecessary, strictly speaking, to review Mr. Manning's argument before the jury, I find the argument so troubling that I feel compelled to comment.It has long been settled in Anglo-Canadian criminal law that in a trial before judge and jury, the judge's role is to state the law and the jury's role is to apply that law to the facts of the case. In Joshua v. The Queen, [1955] A.C. 121 (P.C.), at p. 130, Lord Oaksey enunciated the principle succinctly:
It is a general principle of British law that on a trial by jury it is for the judge to direct the jury on the law and in so far as he thinks necessary on the facts, but the jury, whilst they must take the law from the judge, are the sole judges on the facts.The jury is one of the great protectors of the citizen because it is composed of twelve persons who collectively express the common sense of the community. But the jury members are not expert in the law, and for that reason they must be guided by the judge on questions of law.The contrary principle contended for by Mr. Manning, that a jury may be encouraged to ignore a law it does not like, could lead to gross inequities. One accused could be convicted by a jury who supported the existing law, while another person indicted for the same offence could be acquitted by a jury who, with reformist zeal, wished to express disapproval of the same law. Moreover, a jury could decide that although the law pointed to a conviction, the jury would simply refuse to apply the law to an accused for whom it had sympathy. Alternatively, a jury who feels antipathy towards an accused might convict despite a law which points to acquittal. To give a harsh but I think telling example, a jury fueled by the passions of racism could be told that they need not apply the law against murder to a white man who had killed a black man. Such a possibility need only be stated to reveal the potentially frightening implications of Mr. Manning's assertions. The dangerous argument that a jury may be encouraged to disregard the law was castigated as long ago as 1784 by Lord Mansfield in a criminal libel case, R. v. Shipley (1784), 4 Dougl. 73, 99 E.R. 774, at p. 824:So the jury who usurp the judicature of law, though they happen to be right, are themselves wrong, because they are right by chance only, and have not taken the constitutional way of deciding the question. It is the duty of the Judge, in all cases of general justice, to tell the jury how to do right, though they have it in their power to do wrong, which is a matter entirely between God and their own consciences.To be free is to live under a government by law .... Miserable is the condition of individuals, dangerous is the condition of the State, if there is no certain law, or, which is the same thing, no certain administration of law, to protect individuals, or to guard the State....In opposition to this, what is contended for? -- That the law shall be, in every particular cause, what any twelve men, who shall happen to be the jury, shall be inclined to think; liable to no review, and subject to no control, under all the prejudices of the popular cry of the day, and under all the bias of interest in this town, where thousands, more or less, are concerned in the publication of newspapers, paragraphs, and pamphlets. Under such an administration of law, no man could tell, no counsel could advise, whether a paper was or was not punishable.I can only add my support to that eloquent statement of principle.It is no doubt true that juries have a de facto power to disregard the law as stated to the jury by the judge. We cannot enter the jury room. The jury is never called upon to explain the reasons which lie behind a verdict. It may even be true that in some limited circumstances the private decision of a jury to refuse to apply the law will constitute, in the words of a Law Reform Commission of Canada working paper, "the citizen's ultimate protection against oppressive laws and the oppressive enforcement of the law" (Law Reform Commission of Canada, Working Paper 27, The Jury in Criminal Trials (1980)). But recognizing this reality is a far cry from suggesting that counsel may encourage a jury to ignore a law they do not support or to tell a jury that it has a right to do so. The difference between accepting the reality of de facto discretion in applying the law and elevating such discretion to the level of a right was stated clearly by the United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, in United States v. Dougherty, 473 F.2d 1113 (1972), per Leventhal J., at p. 1134: [my emphasis]
The jury system has worked out reasonably well overall, providing "play in the joints" that imparts flexibility and avoid[s] undue rigidity. An equilibrium has evolved -- an often marvelous balance -- with the jury acting as a "safety valve" for exceptional cases, without being a wildcat or runaway institution. There is reason to believe that the simultaneous achievement of modest jury equity and avoidance of intolerable caprice depends on formal instructions that do not expressly delineate a jury charter to carve out its own rules of law.
To accept Mr. Manning's argument that defence counsel should be able to encourage juries to ignore the law would be to disturb the "marvelous balance" of our system of criminal trials before a judge and jury. Such a disturbance would be irresponsible. I agree with the trial judge and with the Court of Appeal that Mr. Manning was quite simply wrong to say to the jury that if they did not like the law they need not enforce it. He should not have done so.
I had to ... withdraw from the case - I could not ethically invite the jury to ignore a law I was sworn to uphold. Pat and Michael defended themsleves and invited the jury to acquit (which it did), as a protest ...By contrast, the position in Australia is different: in Yager v R [1977] HCA 10 a bare majority of the judges considered that a judge could, in a case where the critical facts were uncontested, direct a conviction. [I must say that this particular case strikes me as an excellent example of why a jury should be prepared to consider acquittal in the face of uncontested facts and a clear direction as to the law by the judge, but that's another story]. There is interesting discussion of this in the judgment of Murphy J (the last judgment) in Jackson v R [1976] HCA 16. And in a more recent Australian case, R v LK [2010] HCA 17, French CJ seemed to doubt the dicta in Yager v R, saying
A "perverse" verdict of not guilty on the other hand has traditionally been seen as a protection against oppressive laws or prosecutions.Historian E P Thompson, in “The State versus its ‘Enemies’,” quoted here, wrote about the jury,
Time and again, when judges and law officers, mounted on high horses, have been riding at breakneck speed towards some convenient despotism, those shadowy figures – not particularly good nor especially true – have risen from the bushes beside the highway and flung a gate across their path. They are known to historians as the Gang of Twelve.The Barrister Magazine also discusses these issues in We are All Trudi Warner! Promoting the Rights of Jurors in the Twenty First Century and see also ‘Not only a right, but a duty’: A history of perverse verdicts
As I said variously before, this is weird, and bizarre. One can just imagine questions from the jury to the judge about the law, eg
Your Honour, is it correct to say "juries retain a power to acquit contrary to the judge's directions if their convictions require it"?And this article, It is welcome that the long-standing principle of jury equity has been reaffirmed. mentions the "slightly peculiar position whereby the principle of jury equity exists but jurors cannot be explicitly told about it in the trial" UPDATE Nov 2025: I've just come across the Fully Informed Jury Association, in the USA (where the legal principles - and the debate about them - appear to be similar. This article, What is jury nullification? describes the issue, and their raison d'être, in which they say
Yes, your Honour, I understand you are telling us to disregard it, but our question is, is it accurate?
FIJA is an educational organization dedicated to fully informing everyone of jurors’ right to exercise jury nullification when they believe it is just to do so.And this article, Are judges who say jury nullification is invalid telling the truth? is specifically about what a jury should be told.
So the above discussion is about juries simply acquitting contrary to the facts as they decide them and the law as they are directed. But one never knows the reasons for a jury's decision, and so in any of these cases they may have simply come to a decision on the facts different from what others might consider the only reasonable decision. There are some recent widely publicised cases where this may have been so.
The Colston statue case: a statue of Edward Colston was thrown into the harbour, on account of Colston's involvement in slave-trading. The judge instructed the jury on several possible varieties of "lawful excuse" which the defendants might have had. They were acquitted. There was an appeal about the correctness of some of the judge's directions, see [2022] EWCA Crim 1259.
The judgment doesn't discuss the situation of an acquittal given contrary to the facts and law, out of sympathy to the accused, it's about the defences raised. It does say (in para 118) that
[if] an issue does not arise on the evidence [then] no direction need be given about it to the jury
a judge may withdraw an issue from the jury if no reasonable jury properly directed could reach a particular conclusion(On this last point, see also Asmeron v R. [2013] EWCA Crim 435, paras 20-22, which doesn't quite say the same thing). But otherwise, Wang (linked above), paras 8 and 12, make it clear that
the judge tells the jury the law so that they can apply it to the facts
It is the function of the jury ... not only to find the facts and to draw inferences from the facts, but ... also to apply the law, as they are directed upon it, to the facts as they find them to be.This means essentially that in a case such as that of the Colston statue, one never knows whether the jury have acquitted on the basis of the defences raised before them, or have simply given a "perverse acquittal". Thus some of the articles about this, such as The Colston statue destroyers have no defence in law but they will never be convicted, and The Colston Four and ‘perverse’ jury verdicts: a very English tradition discuss both situations.
A similar appeal against the judges rulings concerned a case where defendants were acquitted of damaging property - mostly with paint, but also a smashed window. It is [2024] EWCA Crim 243. Paragraphs 54 to 64 discuss Asmeron (which I mention above), concluding
A judge may withdraw a defence from a jury if no reasonable jury properly directed could reach a particular conclusion. We emphasise that a judge must exercise considerable caution before taking that step. It is not for the judge to substitute his or her decision for that of the jury when deciding to withdraw the defence. The judge is only entitled to withdraw the defence from the jury where no reasonable jury, properly directed, could find the defence to be made out. [emphasis as in the judgment]Now you may wonder why I've gone on at such length about this. The point is that if the judge withdraws a defence from the jury, it's quite sensible for him to stop the defendant talking about it (after all, it would be a waste of time). But what the defendant wants to talk about may be exactly what might lead the jury to consider a "perverse acquittal".
UPDATE Jan 2026: This issue arises in the speeches of defence counsel in the “Filton Trial” of Palestine Action-linked activists who are being prosecuted over a break-in in August 2024 at a Bristol factory owned by Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems. Jonathan Cook's article, Barrister's powerful speech at Filton Trial reminds jury of its right to defy judge, archived here, is well worth reading. An article by Craig Murray contains a shorter excerpt of the speech. The full speech is at THE FILTON TRIAL – DEFENCE SPEECHES, and The Filton Trial: Lead defence barrister’s closing speech contains highlights. (Scroll down to "Count two: Criminal damage" to see what he said about Bushel's case - Penn and Meade - mentioned above). Quoting the Cook article,
Here I find myself looking again at the quotes from Wang (above, which I repeat here)But the most astonishing part of his speech relates to the third charge: criminal damage. The defendants have only one available defence against this. In legal parlance, it is called “lawful excuse”. It means that any criminal damage they caused can be viewed as lawful because it was designed to prevent the commission of a far graver crime – in this case genocide.
At one point in the trial a jury member sent a note to the judge, Mr Justice Johnson, asking this very question: “If we decide that they [the defendants] genuinely believe that they were performing life-saving action and were morally compelled to destroy weapons they believed were going to be used to kill civilians in what they believe to be an illegal genocide, would that amount to a lawful excuse?”
The judge, who repeatedly stifled efforts by the defence to air evidence of Elbit System’s involvement in the genocide, answered that the jury must not take into account such “lawful excuse”. In his words: “There is no evidence in this case of anything that is capable in law of amounting to a lawful excuse, so that is not something that you need to consider.”
the judge tells the jury the law so that they can apply it to the facts
It is the function of the jury ... not only to find the facts and to draw inferences from the facts, but ... also to apply the law, as they are directed upon it, to the facts as they find them to be.Shouldn't this mean that the judge explains to the jury the law about "lawful excuse", and the jury decides whether the reasons for the defendants' actions meet that definition? Comments please!
UPDATE Feb 2026: Victory for Palestine Action as “Filton 6” acquitted, actually "the jury either acquitted or refused to convict" the six on the various charges.
The limitations of what the barristers could say in their defence speeches were so extreme, that five of the six defendants in the Filton Trial decided to dismiss their barristers before the end of their case and make their closing speeches themselves.
Yes, you read that right. The barristers were forbidden from making the defence case, so the defendants had to speak for themselves.
And what great speeches they all made. The Real Media website has done a fantastic job in documenting the trial, and I highly recommend you to read the closing speeches in full.
“The jury need to be directed that they are responsible for decisions of fact; the judge for decisions of law.” This division of responsibilities lies at the heart of our jury system. If juries make up the law as they go along ...while seemingly oblivious to the fact that in his article he describes the situation where the result depended on the judge's view of the facts rather than the jury's - you might say, the judge making up the facts as he goes along - on the issue of whether there was a terrorist connection to the crime (not only that, but the finding of a terrorist connection depended on finding that the action was "designed to influence the government ..." but according to this article by Craig Murray, "Judge Johnson ruled that the defendants were not permitted to refer to their motives.")
the actions taken to disable Elbit equipment were specifically not acts of political persuasion. They were not petitions, or rallies, or economic pressure campaigns. The very point of direct action is that it aims to interfere with a given site of production and circulation of materials; a broken quadcopter drone can’t rain fire down on the bodies of Palestinian civilians, can’t flay the flesh of Palestinian toddlers (as quadcopter fire has been shown to do).
If “terrorism,” per Johnson, refers to criminal acts with the aim of ideological, political persuasion, we might consider this: Following escalations in Britain’s white riots against immigrants, the government has moved to further harden its border regime and shutter many asylum hotels that had become focal points for racist protests. By the lights of the British government, this does not constitute yielding to white supremacist terror, though. The label “terrorism” is reserved for other targets.
The procedural issue mentioned above was about how the judge should or could go about proceeding against Rajiv Menon KC for contempt, and that what he had done initially was not permissible. Consequently, he produced this judgment: Re Rajiv Menon KC, dated 22 June 2026, in which he determined that the incident should be reported to an appropriate Presiding Judge. It appears that this resulted in Mr Justice Nicklin determining that contempt proceedings should be instituted, and heard before Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb on 28 July 2026, see his decision of 30 June 2026.
His chambers, and an associated set, issued statements on 7 and 8 May:
The judgment of 22 June 2026 records that the judge made various rulings on 3 July 2025, 14 November 2025, 2 December 2025 and 22 December 2025, and gave legal directions to the jury dated 6 January 2026. Rajiv Menon's speech to the jury was apparently on 8 Jan 2026 (see THE FILTON TRIAL – DEFENCE SPEECHES, following which the judge gave a ruling of 12 January 2026 which apparently contained and explained the allegations of contempt. I haven't seen any of these documents - I don't know whether they are available - but the "effect of [the judge's] rulings and directions" is set out in paragraph 3 of the judgment, and the allegations of contempt, presumably in less detail than in the 12 January ruling, are set out in paragraph 4 of the judgment. However the judgment does set out, in Appendix 1: extracts from closing defence speech for Charlotte Head, Mr Menon's speech, with the offending passages underlined. My comments on this appears a bit below.
Meanwhile, the Chair of the Criminal Bar Association, Riel Karmy-Jones KC, has said
We have heard of barristers changing their speeches or being told to change them - including in cases where no direction has been given by a judge.
And that really can’t be ignored, because people at the criminal bar have become uncertain and scared of what they can and can’t say; scared that somehow they might be - at the end of a trial where they have faithfully represented their client themselves - facing a charge of criminal contempt.
It is starting to feel like it’s about the politics of the subject matter of the trial, rather than the core principles of how a barrister represents his client.
My comments (some essentially echoing points others have made) on the judgment: Re Rajiv Menon KC, dated 22 June 2026, referring to its paragraph numbers:
As to (6), here the judge says "I did not rule that the defendants had no lawful excuse", but item (2) of paragraph 3 (which records the effect of his rulings and directions) plainly says "No question of lawful excuse arose."
The judge goes on to state that his ruling was that no defence arose under section 5(2)(b) of the Criminal Damage Act 1971. Now bear in mind that this section provides excuses additional to lawful excuses which apply otherwise (see the intoductory words of subsection 2). So: if there was a genuine misunderstanding at the time (unlikely in view of the words quoted above), then obviously there is no mens rea on Menon's part. And the suggestion that he deliberately misled the jury by telling them that his client had no excuse, rather than that section 5(2)(b) did not provide them with an excuse, where this would be quite contrary to his client's interest, is just farcically stupid.
Regarding (1) and (2), the judge discusses at length Menon's reference to the case of Penn and Meade, and the plaque at the Old Bailey. Lines 246-289 of Menon's address in the Appendix to the judgment shows what Menon said about it - it's largely descriptive and apparently accurate. The judge admits that "defence counsel have referred to the Old Bailey plaque on [numerous] occasions", but says that "In this case ... [he had] given a specific direction prohibiting such reference" - he conveniently omits to clarify whether the specific direction was not to refer to "jury equity" or not to refer to Penn & Mead and the Old Bailey plaque.
Supposing we allow (not unreasonably) that Menon's speech encouraged the jury to act as did the jury in Penn & Mead. We may ask, does this have anything to do with jury equity? This question does not seem to have troubled the judge (and I admit, I didn't know the answer to it until looking up references in the course of writing this stuff). Spoiler alert: the answer is nothing.
Putting together what I've written above, where a jury result is surprising it may be for any of the following reasons
So what about Penn and Mead? My main source about the trial is THE TRYAL OF William Penn & William Mead, transcribed at Project Gutenberg, and with photographs in archive.org. This book seems to be from the United States, and there is an commentary on it which seems to be part of a speech given in a trial in 1735 in New York.
Rather than a brief indictment, with its meaning to be explained, there is a indictment of 258 words, of which I quote a few: "with Force and Arms", "unlawfully and tumultuously did Assemble and Congregate themselves together, to the Disturbance of the Peace of the said Lord the King", "by Reason whereof a great Concourse and Tumult of People in the Street aforesaid, then and there, a long time did remain and continue, in contempt of the said Lord the King, and of his Law, to the great Disturbance of his Peace; to the great Terror and Disturbance of many". I trust it's clear that there is enough here that any jury might differ on some elements of the allegation. In any event, here is the commentary on it given in 1735:
it was said, That they with other Persons, to the Number of 300. unlawfully and tumultuously assembled, to the Disturbance of the Peace, &c. To which they pleaded Not Guilty. And the Petit Jury being sworn to try the Issue between the King and the Prisoners, that is, whether they were Guilty, according to the Form of the Indictment? Here there was no Dispute but they were assembled together, to the Number mentioned in the Indictment; But Whether that Meeting together was riotously, tumultuously, and to the Disturbance of the Peace? was the Question. And the Court told the Jury it was, and ordered the Jury to find it so; For (said the Court) the Meeting was the Matter of Fact, and that is confessed, and we tell you it is unlawful, for it is against the Statute; and the Meeting being unlawful, it follows of Course that it was tumultuous, and to the Disturbance of the Peace. But the Jury did not think fit to take the Court's Word for it, for they could neither find Riot, Tumult, or any Thing tending to the Breach of the Peace committed at that Meeting; and they acquitted Mr. Penn and MeadThat is to say, there is no cause to believe that the jury in the Penn & Mead case did, or should have, found the evidence convincing, and consequently there is no cause to treat the case as having anything to do with jury equity; rather, that case, and so the Old Bailey plaque, say nothing about jury equity, but are all about the jury's right not to be bulllied into a particular result.
Here is the appeal judgment in the case of the jurors, archived here. Reasons (briefly - as I understand them - it's all rather old English) and quotes:
The ruling by Judge Johnson of 15 June 2026 is published here: Ruling on terrorism connection
My comments on that (some essentially echoing points others have made), referring to paragraph numbers of the ruling linked above:
the use or threat [of action] is designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public or a section of the public(and he repeats this in par 19(2)). The defence said (para 24)
In paras 41 to 45 he describes Palestine Action and attributes the aims of Palestine Action as being the aims of the action against Elbit. That is, where Palestine Action has aims including "shutting down Elbit and ending British complicity in Israeli war crimes", he attributes Palestine Action's aims generally to the defendants in relation to this particular action. He reinforces this in para 46, saying "each defendant wanted to damage or destroy weapons that the defendant believed would be used by Israel unlawfully to kill civilians in Gaza. That was, however, just one part of a broader and more strategic and overarching or dominant purpose"
Whereas it seems much more reasonable to conclude that the defendants' aim in this particular action was simply (maybe) "shutting down Elbit" or at least limiting the amount of material they were able to export. And I find subparas 45(1) to 45(5) and 45(10) of the judgment completely irrelevant. And subparas 45(6), 45(7) and 45(9) recount what some of the defendants had said, to the general effect that "we've been trying to persuade the Government to stop arms exports to Israel, to no effect, therefore we're undertaking direct action to stop or limit such arms exports". That is, Plan A (trying to persuade the Government) has failed, so they're moving to Plan B (direct action). But the judge seems to consider the Plan B as though it were part of Plan A.
On this last point, see The founders of Palestine Action on how to shut down a weapons factory
Palestine Action’s sustained disruptions since 2020 have forced Elbit to permanently close two of its factories and abandon its London headquarters. Their protest action also scuppered a £280m deal with the Ministry of Defence.
A reader's comment on the above set me thinking: who does this Judge Silas Reid think he is, attempting to deny the defendants the chance of a "sympathy acquittal", something whose possibility the House of Lords (in Wang) has firmly endorsed? Part of the answer to this question, I guess, is that he is pretty keen (to put it kindly) on seeing a conviction.
Which reminds me of something else I read in In Geoffrey Robertson's book The Justice Game, where Robertson writes, in relation to his work as a young barrister at the Old Bailey (London's Central Criminal Court), about a judge there
He [the judge] was a burned-out case by the time I came to do a trial before him. 'He's had twenty-two acquittals in a row', whispered my co-defender.Which indicates that it was then (in 1974) seen as success on the part of a judge to obtain convictions rather than acquittals. In fact I can't decide whether Robertson was trying to make a point by being extra subtle, or had himself not noticed the sheer awfulness of what he had written.
Whether this thinking still prevails in English criminal courts is of course another matter. But clearly it is something juries should know to beware of.
quoting Lord Erskine (1705-1766): Criminal justice in the hands of the people is the basis of freedom. While that remains there can be no tyranny, because the people will not execute tyrannical law against themselves. Whenever it is lost, liberty must fall along with it.
It [jury trial] gives us far more than protection against state oppression; it provides a precious leavening of the inflexibility that trials by judge-alone would necessarily involve.
if judges think a case cannot be in the public interest, or a waste of time, they can do little but grumble and ask the prosecution to think again. On the other hand, juries, immune from the least fear of any comeback, can send a message loud and clear, and have been known to do so.
quoting Sir Harry Ognall, an experienced criminal judge: A judge sitting alone or with assessors is bound by the letter of the law; a jury is not. A jury can simply cast aside a legal principle and conclude, “We don’t care what the law says; this is not fair.”
I have no doubt that when new legislation is being considered by Parliament, or decisions are taken by prosecutors, the inescapable, sobering and deeply satisfying thought hovering in the minds of each is, or should be: ‘Could we ever get this past a jury?’