I was sorta wondering about those climate change folk who got done for contempt of court. It’s Georgie who actually explains it:
The same instructions were issued by Reid to a defendant in another protest trial, Ruth Cook. She obeyed his directions but, she told me, “It felt really odd. It’s hard to connect to the jury if you can’t explain why you are there.”
He gave the same order to Stephanie Aylett, when she was tried on the charge of public nuisance. She tells me she tried to abide by it. “When I made my closing statement, the judge didn’t interrupt. He let me speak. I was saying things that I thought were just my opinion. Such as that my idea of significant disruption is one-third of Pakistan being under water. But he still charged me with contempt.” She apologised for “inadvertently causing contempt. I clearly didn’t mean to do it.” But Reid found her guilty of the contempt charge and will sentence her on 24 March.
I didn’t know why the contempt charge. Can’t people explain why they did something?
The problem is that when people are tried on the ancient charge of public nuisance, motivation and proportionality are not a defence.
OK, bang to rights then. Shrug.
Do note something fun. If you insist on objecting to this then OK, that means you’ve got to object to all strict liability offences. Like pollution, say. Or dangerous working conditions. Fun, eh?
This was a major problem with one of the Downloading Of Naughty Stuff Acts. It made kiddie porn a strict liability offence. Although there may be legitimate reasons for doing so ( journalism or academic research ) it’s the chokey if caught. I think this happened to Pete Townshend didn’t it ?
Some public order offences can be mitigated with a “heat of the moment” or “self defence or extreme provocation” defence, but these people were acting in a premeditated manner and should therefore be quite rightly strung up or placed in an arena with lions wearing laser guns.
Surely if you’re in a jury trial, they are there to find you guilty or not guilty. Therefore, you don’t tell them why you did it, you tell them you didn’t do it. Otherwise, no need for a jury and straight to sentancing.
That’s the bit when you get to say why you did it. To the judge
So why is entering a bullshit defence contempt of court?
Entering a bullshit defence is just entering a bullshit defence. People do it all the time. If the jury buys it, then the jury buy’s it.
Or is this another step towards the abolition of jury trial?
Incidentally some German judges are letting these clowns off on the basis that there’s a climate emergency and that permits acts like blocking traffic as a form of “self defence”.
“The judge clearly told me not to talk about something in his court, but I did, and I got done for it. I just can’t understand it…”
Muppets – ‘greatest catastrophe ever faced by humanity’. Not the last ice age? Not the Spanish ‘flu? A small GDP drop for richer people is worse then that?
In related Grauniad news I see that the £450m subsidy scheme to get people to switch to heat pumps can’t even give free money away to people to make the change. So people value heat pumps as less than the subsidised price! Hilarious as the comments are ‘more needs to be done’. Like what? Give them away for “free”?
The court/jury process is supposed to:
* make a finding of fact that is supported by the evidence presented
* ascertain if the actions that were found to have occured break the law
If the defendant presents their case as “I dun it, I kept doing it, I did it, yes I did it…” then that pretty much establishes point one, doesn’t it.
* yes, there’s a third part, but if you mention it you get bared from being on the jury!
Maybe if they were installed for free (including all resulting enforced upgrades eg to double up radiators in every room) and all running costs for the lifetime of the equipment were paid I might be tempted. But probably still not.
So why is entering a bullshit defence contempt of court?
Entering a bullshit defence is just entering a bullshit defence. People do it all the time. If the jury buys it, then the jury buy’s it.
Or is this another step towards the abolition of jury trial?
Or just reducing the chances of jury nullification?
BiFR “Incidentally some German judges are letting these clowns off on the basis that there’s a climate emergency and that permits acts like blocking traffic as a form of “self defence”.
It’s amazing the same rationale is not used when dealing with, say, farmers seeing their livelyhood legislated into oblivion over said putative “climate crisis”.
Almost as if there’s “one rule for thee, and one for me and mine”.
So why is entering a bullshit defence contempt of court?
Because they weren’t offering a defence. A defence would be saying I didn’t do it, because… They didn’t deny what they did. They were using a court to make a political statement.
Sure, giving them away for “Free”, by which we mean 100% taxpayer subsidised might increase the uptake, but there are vast numbers of homes and flats for which heat pumps are unsuitable for installation.
Even if you did get one installed for free, it only removes the cold from the room, it doesn’t warm it up much, so while you might get subsidised installation you’re still paying a lot of money on operating costs for essentially tepid heating.
It’s a more sophisticated technology than Economy 7 storage heaters, but still the same sort of con trick.
Best advice is to upgrade your gas boiler while you still can and have a wood burning fireplace fitted in the back room where snoopers can’t see it through the windows, because you know these ecoloons are going to want that as well.
No warmth for you peon!
” have a wood burning fireplace fitted in the back room where snoopers can’t see it through the windows,”
I think they’ll be able to see the chimney though.
bloke in spain: Exactly. They entered a plea of “Not Guilty”, then told the jury why they committed the crime. The contempt could hardly be clearer.
bloke in spain – yes if you ask your advocate to give a bullshit non defence – they’ll 100% of the time say no can do. They know they’ll get shut down by the bench pretty quickly with further career repurcussions. Pushing defences that you know aren’t based in law is not good law career advice. In theory the accused can get away with this, representing themself, since they are assumed not to have legal knowledge, but once the judge explicitly tells them mentioning such a such is a no no then they don’t get that leeway.
Strict liablity offences do have some limited exceptional defences once Actus reus has been established. Lots of traffic laws are strict liability… IIRC there was a case where an big agricultural thingy ran over, mangled someone, killed them, and the driver was charged with failing to stop at the scene of accident. However it was successfully argued that didn’t know (and more importantly) had no way of reasonably knowing that someone had fallen under the machinery. No bump, no noise, nothing to indicate something had happened. They got off, but it has to be the point of physical impossibility a human could have known.
jgh @ 10.46. Look, this idea of people saying ‘I did it because’ and accepting that was the reason for them doing stuff, is just so out of date…..
We do not accept moslems saying “I’m following what it says in koran / hadith / sira”, before, during or after blowing people up / beheading people / stabbing people to death / flying jet aircraft into tall buildings /driving motor vehicles into crowds of infidels /raping, torturing and otherwise abusing young white girls etc. etc., so why anything else?
@Bloke in the Fourth Reich
“So why is entering a bullshit defence contempt of court?”
It isn’t. Failing to follow the instructions of the judge is.
“…one-third of Pakistan being under water.”
It was about one eighth in fact. The one third figure was a lie propagated by the BBC. One eighth of a country that big is still pretty bad but there is no evidence that CO2 was in any way the cause of the flooding. Floods have always happened from time to time and always will.
What increased the problems caused by flooding in Pakistan was (a) overpopulation forcing more people to live in flood-prone areas (see also: UK); and (b) inadequate infrastructure. In short = living in a third world shithole.
@ Rhoida Klapp
My chimneys were built in the nineteenth century: are your local ecoloons into tearing down chuiney stacksin a “conservation area” – a different bunch of eco-loons would oppose them in my neck of the woods.
There’s nothing wrong with a jury deciding that the law is wrong and acquitting a defendant who admits doing the thing they are accused of. However, it is reasonable that this is limited to people doing things which are closely connected to a problem – such as the case where four women were acquitted of criminal damage that they did to prevent a plane being used to commit war crimes. Their action directly related to their purpose and a jury found them to be reasonable.
However, blocking roads and committing criminal damage merely to raise awareness or intimidate corporations is different as the actions are very remote from the problem they are purporting to address. If drilling for oil is the problem, you might get away with sabotaging a ship involved in the drilling, but not attacks on an office building as that would only have an effect through intimidating people.
Consequently, it is reasonable to require defendants to stick to appropriate arguments and use their day in court as a general platform to further some cause. I note that no mistrial was declared in these cases – it was not to prevent the jury hearing stuff, merely to avoid wasting the court’s time on irrelevant material.
@Chris Miller there’s also the impact of deforestation in Pakistan which would have worsened the flooding impact
Charles: I disagree. Criminal damage is criminal damage whatever the ‘justification’. Protesters who feel strongly enough to go that route should fully expect to pay the penalty. Their actions may or may not prompt the public to rise up and demand change but that is their bet. But they need to pay the price and should accept that with good grace. However the current crop of eco-loonies seem hell-bent on alienating the public.
there’s also the impact of deforestation in Pakistan which would have worsened the flooding impact
True, though that in turn is mainly the result of overpopulation.