Category: Climate Chaos

News is being tweet­ed out of court — all defen­dants found guilty of obstruc­tion of the train.
Judge has stat­ed that he will be impos­ing com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice type pun­ish­ments and no prison time.
Defen­dants liable for costs and com­pen­sa­tion.

The 22 were acquit­ted of actu­al­ly stop­ping the train, after evi­dence that no one knew which of them had donned fake rail­way­men’s uni­forms and used red flags to bring it to a halt (2 ill & 5 ear­li­er admit­ted guilt).

A defen­dan­t’s sum­ming up (3rd July):

“Mem­bers of the jury.

I’m going to try to sum­marise why we feel that we are not guilty, why we feel that what we did was right, despite the very prop­er laws against obstruct­ing trains, why we feel that it was the wrong deci­sion of the Crown Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice to pros­e­cute us in this case, and why we don’t feel that we are guilty of a crime.

I want to start by respond­ing to your request for clar­i­fi­ca­tion yes­ter­day about “law­ful excuse”. His hon­our may say [in his sum­ming up] that it’s true that there are ways in law to make space for cir­cum­stances, to allow a big­ger pic­ture to be con­sid­ered.

These ways can have dif­fer­ent names for dif­fer­ent offences — so for exam­ple “law­ful excuse”, which you asked about yes­ter­day, applies only to the charge of crim­i­nal dam­age. For exam­ple, last Sep­tem­ber, a jury in Kent found six pro­test­ers not guilty of com­mit­ting £30,000 worth of crim­i­nal dam­age to Kingsnorth coal-fired pow­er sta­tion, since the group were act­ing to pre­vent a greater crime. Those on tri­al did not dis­agree that crim­i­nal dam­age is a crime, just that, in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, it may be nec­es­sary and pro­por­tion­ate to cause some dam­age to pre­vent a great crime. That jury agreed.

His hon­our may explain that there is a legal defence of “neces­si­ty”, that applies to most laws, and that it was on the basis of “neces­si­ty” — the fact that we believed our actions were going to save lives and that we had to act — that we pre­pared a legal defence before this tri­al. Along with many legal pro­fes­sion­als we were very dis­ap­point­ed by his hon­our’s deci­sion pri­or to the tri­al that this defence was not avail­able to us in law. Nonethe­less we decid­ed not to appeal against it. We felt that you the jury would be free to decide on the facts of a case as you find them — and not just the ones his hon­our tells you are rel­e­vant.

It’s up to you to decide whether what we did was nec­es­sary. I would like to empha­sise to you that we believed and we still believe that it was urgent­ly nec­es­sary to do what we did, and pro­por­tion­ate to the scale of the prob­lem, that the con­se­quences of that train tak­ing coal into Drax are so seri­ous that any rea­son­able per­son would under­stand our rea­sons for stop­ping it. To help explain why we were so sure of the links between Drax’s activ­i­ties and deaths around the world we had expert wit­ness­es lined up to talk to you about the imme­di­ate and ongo­ing harm that Drax’s emis­sions cause. How­ev­er from what evi­dence we have been able to get across to you, with his hon­our’s indul­gence, we hope that you can see that these facts speak for them­selves, and our actions, though harm­ful, were indeed nec­es­sary to try to stop a greater harm. And if you agree with that then you still have a legal right – as the jury — to find us not guilty.

You’ve heard it said already I think, that the judge decides about the law, but the jury decide about the facts. What does that mean? It means you the jury can decide as you see fit. You the jury have a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to fol­low your own judge­ment and not nec­es­sar­i­ly fol­low the judge’s direc­tions to find us guilty. In oth­er words, you get to make the final deci­sion. In law this prin­ci­ple is called the jury’s pow­er of nul­li­fi­ca­tion, and it’s been a right that has been reg­u­lar­ly used over the years when juries have felt the law has been applied harsh­ly, or inap­pro­pri­ate­ly, or unjust­ly, or incor­rect­ly.

Per­haps I can explain this with a quote from a very senior judge, Lord Den­ning. He said:

“This prin­ci­ple was estab­lished as long ago as 1670 in a cel­e­brat­ed case of the Quak­ers, William Penn and William Mead. All that they had done was to preach in Lon­don on a Sun­day after­noon. They were charged with caus­ing an unlaw­ful and tumul­tuous assem­bly there. The judge direct­ed the jury to find the Quak­ers guilty, but they refused. The Jury said Penn was guilty of preach­ing, but not of unlaw­ful assem­bly. The Judge refused to accept this ver­dict. He threat­ened them with all sorts of pains and pun­ish­ments. He kept them ‘all night with­out meat, drink, fire, or oth­er accom­mo­da­tion: they had not so much as a cham­ber pot, though desired’. They still refused to find the Quak­ers guilty of an unlaw­ful assem­bly. He kept them anoth­er night and still they refused. He then com­mand­ed each to answer to his name and give his ver­dict sep­a­rate­ly. Each gave his ver­dict ‘Not Guilty’. For this the judge fined them 40 marks apiece and cast them into prison until it was paid. One of them Edward Bushell, there­upon brought his (case) before the Court of the King’s Bench. It was there held that no judge had any right to imprison a jury­man for find­ing against his direc­tion on a point of law; for the judge could nev­er direct what the law was with­out know­ing the facts, and of the facts the jury were the sole judge. The jury were there­upon set free.”

This was affirmed as recent­ly as 2005, in rela­tion to the case of Wang, where a com­mit­tee of Law Lords in the high­est court in the land, the House of Lords, con­clud­ed that: “there are no cir­cum­stances in which a judge is enti­tled to direct a jury to return a ver­dict of guilty”. So you do have that right to decide for your­selves. And unlike in 1670, his hon­our won’t be able to fine you, or put you in prison for mak­ing what he sees as the wrong deci­sion.

There have been many cas­es over the years where juries have decid­ed, on reflect­ing more broad­ly, to find peo­ple not guilty despite direc­tions from the judge. For exam­ple, the case of Zel­ter and oth­ers who were accused of dam­age to an air­craft about to be used for bomb­ing civil­ians. In all of these and oth­ers the judge said that the defen­dants admit­ted the offence and so must be found guilty. But the jury chose to look out­side the lim­it­ed view of the court room, and to find them not guilty.

The free­dom that you have is what enables the law, where nec­es­sary, to move for­ward. It is what allows you to look beyond the con­fines of this court to the wider world, and to make a judge­ment based not just on law, but to make a judge­ment based on jus­tice. Jus­tice is the force that under­pins and breathes life into the law, and it is your role as the jury to see that jus­tice as you see it is done.

We all know that times change, and what was accept­able in one era may not be accept­able in anoth­er. You have heard of how it was once legal to own oth­er peo­ple, how it was ille­gal for women to vote. Well one way or anoth­er we are going to have to stop burn­ing coal and move on from the fos­sil fuel era. And that means that the law will even­tu­al­ly have to change and acknowl­edge the harm that car­bon emis­sions do to all of us, by mak­ing them ille­gal. The only ques­tion is whether the law will catch up in time for there to be any­thing left to pro­tect.

We are not try­ing to tell you how to decide. We are only try­ing to say that it is up to you, and we are grate­ful for that.

I want you to think back to that sit­u­a­tion of there being a per­son on the tracks ahead of that train going on its way to Drax. Mem­bers of the Jury, it may sound like a strange thing to say but in truth there is a per­son on the branch line to Drax. The pros­e­cu­tion have not chal­lenged the facts we pre­sent­ed to you on oath about the con­se­quences of burn­ing coal at Drax. 180 human lives lost every year, species lost for­ev­er. There is a direct, unequiv­o­cal, proven link between the emis­sions of car­bon diox­ide at this pow­er sta­tion and the appalling con­se­quences of cli­mate change. That many of those con­se­quences impact on the poor of oth­er nations or peo­ple in Hull we don’t know and should not in any way negate the real­i­ty of this suf­fer­ing. We got on that train to stop those emis­sions, because all oth­er meth­ods in our democ­ra­cy were fail­ing. Just because we don’t know the name of the per­son on the tracks or where they live or the exact time and day of their dying, does not in our view mean they are less wor­thy of pro­tec­tion.

We don’t dis­pute that there’s a law against obstruct­ing trains. We don’t dis­pute that obstruct­ing trains is a crime and should con­tin­ue to be a crime. We just argue that in this case, we should not be found guilty of a crime for try­ing to block this train on its way to Drax.

On Tues­day the pros­e­cu­tion argued that what we did was quite sim­ply a crime, and as a result we should be found guilty. They were try­ing to sug­gest that if you find us not guilty, the whole world would fall apart. We argue that the more like­ly route to the whole world falling apart is if we con­tin­ue burn­ing coal in the enor­mous quan­ti­ties that it is being burnt at Drax.

His hon­our may say that we have been telling you sto­ries, that we are try­ing to intro­duce emo­tions into the tri­al to dis­tort the evi­dence. But we have been telling you the facts. If those facts move you, that’s because they are mov­ing, and they are what moved us to do what we did.

We are hap­py to be judged by you, the jury.

Thank you for tak­ing the time to lis­ten to us.”