The acquittal by a jury of 4 folks at Bristol Crown Court docket this week for his or her function in flattening the statue of Edward Colston and dumping it within the docks has been greeted with a refrain of concern by members of parliament. Former cupboard minister Robert Jenrick implied in a tweet that the ruling someway undermined the rule of regulation.
We attended all ten days of the trial from the general public gallery. Whereas we can’t know the jury’s reasoning, it’s unlikely that this was a “perverse” verdict – the place the jury believes the defendants are responsible in regulation however nonetheless select to acquit. On this case, the choose gave the jury a spread of authorized causes to acquit the defendants.
The trials of protestors are hardly ever like “odd” legal trials. In most trials, defendants contest the info of the case: what occurred, whether or not it was them, in the event that they had been there, and so forth. In protest trials, defendants focus as an alternative on justifying their actions. Invariably, this explicitly brings politics into the court docket.
The “Colston 4” had been charged with legal injury. Underneath the Felony Harm Act 1971, defendants charged with destroying or harming property can argue that they had a “lawful excuse” for his or her actions. It is because safeguarding property – whether or not it’s a home, a automobile or the statue of a slave dealer – is much less essential than defending public security or stopping a extra severe crime. To exhibit “lawful excuse”, defendants should present that they acted moderately they usually truthfully believed they had been performing for these causes.
All 4 of the accused accepted main roles within the occasions of June 7 2020. As round 3,000 folks congregated close to Colston’s statue throughout a Black Lives Matter march, two of the defendants produced ropes. One other secured them round Colston’s neck. As soon as the statue had been pulled to the bottom, the fourth defendant inspired others to roll it to the docks, throughout the cobbles the place (as he stated within the witness field) so many had been dragged towards their will centuries earlier than.
Video of what the defendants did was repeatedly proven to the court docket. The jury might have little doubt concerning the “info” of the case.
However the defendants denied their actions had been legal injury. They and their attorneys put ahead three legally accessible causes for this.
Public indecency
One of many key arguments was that the group was performing to stop the extra severe crime of public indecency. Although the prosecution insisted at the beginning of the trial that the one folks within the dock had been the defendants, this hardly ever felt the case.
As a substitute, it was Edward Colston and Bristol Metropolis Council that gave the impression to be on trial. The defendants and a number of witnesses argued that Colston’s crimes had been so horrific that the continued presence of his statue was offensive, abusive and distressing. The native council’s failure to take away it, regardless of 30 years of petitions and calls for from Bristol’s African-Caribbean group, specifically, amounted to misconduct in public workplace.
The choose, HHJ Peter Blair QC, didn’t enable jurors to determine on the grounds of misconduct as a result of there was inadequate proof on the matter. However he did enable them to think about whether or not the statue was offensive. One defendant stated in court docket that the statue was “offensive to the true character of Bristol… [it is] fallacious to have fun a person who had such crimes towards humanity in such a multicultural metropolis”.
The defendants additionally demonstrated that they genuinely believed the residents of Bristol had been the house owners of the statue and would consent, together with by highlighting that the plaque on the plinth of the statue said that it was “erected by residents of Bristol”. And as proof that the defendants really believed native residents would assist their actions, they famous the numerous petitions that had been despatched to the council calling for the statue’s elimination. The prosecution argued that the actual fact that these petitions had been addressed to the council implied that the council was the proprietor.
Property, rights and emotion
Lastly, the defendants argued that that they had a lawful excuse in {that a} conviction can be a disproportionate interference with their freedom of expression and freedom of meeting rights beneath Articles 10 and 11 of the European Conference on Human Rights. To convict, a jury must have thought-about the hurt brought about to the council’s property rights so important that it might successfully override the defendants’ protest rights.
Toppled, dumped, and at last recovered, the statue is now on public show in a Bristol museum. As prosecution witness Jon Finch, head of tradition and inventive industries for Bristol Metropolis Council, conceded, Colston’s statue has better cultural worth than ever earlier than, in that it now speaks to Bristol’s “previous, current and future”.
This makes the feedback of Conservative MP Robert Buckland significantly questionable. Chatting with the BBC, he stated that new laws at present making its means by parliament seeks to impose more durable sentences for damaging memorials as a result of “the emotional and psychological scars that may be brought on by the desecration of struggle memorials wanted to be mirrored extra flexibly within the regulation” . However the hurt brought on by an offensive statue might, in his view, solely be challenged by requesting motion by the authorities, even when this request was frequently ignored.
Penalties
Removed from being perverse, the jury’s resolution re-asserts what EP Thompson known as the “ethical economic system” of the group – an act of absolution recognising the collective motion of the defendants as being on the service of the entire group. The defence supplied a body for the actions that positioned them inside an ongoing group dialogue concerning the slave commerce, Bristol’s function inside it and the veneration of a mass assassin.
The jury, plainly, agreed. They usually did so on authorized grounds supplied for by parliament and directed by the trial choose.
In proposing to extend the utmost penalty for toppling a statue to 10 years in jail, the federal government says it’s aiming to recognise the “emotional or wider misery” brought on by injury to public property. Because the jury at Bristol Crown Court docket has this week proven, “emotional and wider misery” cuts each methods in relation to the general public commemoration of slave merchants.
The authors don’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or organisation that might profit from this text, and have disclosed no related affiliations past their educational appointment.
