Sheffield Defend Our Juries are celebrating following the High Court decision on Monday to dismiss the application of Robert Courts MP, the Solicitor General, to imprison Trudi Warner, a 69-year-old retired social worker. She held a sign outside Inner London Crown Court in March 2023 saying “that a jury has the right to acquit a defendant as a matter of conscience, whatever the directions of the judge” and coincided with the prosecution of a group of people for taking direct action to tackle climate breakdown and fuel poverty. Delivering the judgement of the court, Mr Justice Saini stated:
“The Solicitor General’s case does not disclose a reasonable basis for committal … It is fanciful to suggest that Ms Warner’s conduct [amounted to common law contempt].
Her placard simply summarised the principle of jury equity. Her conduct was consistent with information sharing.
She was in essence a human billboard.”
This followed a massive campaign involving silent protests outside every Crown Court in England and Wales last week, including Sheffield and Doncaster. Campaigners are breathing a deep sigh of relief that they are no longer threatened with being arrested, simply for holding a sign stating what the law says.
Last Tuesday 14 brave Sheffielders sat outside Sheffield Crown Court with the signs. On Thursday 11 people from around South Yorkshire gathered at Doncaster Crown Court to repeat the action. In February I joined more than three hundred people in writing a letter to the Solicitor General inviting him to prosecute us too. Last week alone more than 700 people replicated Ms Warner’s action. There would not have been room in our overcrowded prisons for all these people to be sent to jail.
Speaking immediately after the judgment, Ms Warner said:
“I’m relieved that some common sense has prevailed in this case and that the High Court agrees that holding up a sign about the rights of juries should not be treated as a crime. In my worst nightmares, I couldn’t have imagined that my hand-written sign would lead to a case of this gravity with such severe penalties. At the same time, I have no regrets. The support I’ve received from the public has been moving and wonderful and helped to ensure the vital democratic principle of jury equity is more widely understood around the country. Judge Reid and the Solicitor General might have wanted to conceal that principle from juries, but thanks to the public reaction their actions have had the opposite effect. I thank them for that. I would also like to express solidarity with Dr Sarah Benn, a medical doctor and public servant, who was last week found guilty of misconduct by the GMC after being imprisoned for holding up a sign saying ‘Stop New Oil’”.
Sheffield Defend Our Juries spokesperson Geraldine Roberts said,
“There is a 60,000 case backlog in the court and the government’s own Attorney General wasted taxpayers money bringing proceedings against a retired social worker for holding a sign with the law written on it.The Government should be working to tackle the problem of climate change, not contriving to imprison those who are raising the alarm about it.”
Ms Warner’s prosecution has attracted international attention, suggesting the Government’s crackdown on protest is backfiring. Newspapers from the US to Japan and India to Spain, have reported Ms Warner’s story under headlines such as:
“The right to protest is under threat in Britain, undermining a pillar of democracy”
Leading figures in law and the media have rallied to Ms Warner’s corner. Writing in the Barrister magazine, Richard Vogler, Professor of Comparative Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, University of Sussex, wrote:
“George Orwell noticed the tendency of repressive law to degenerate into farce, when truth becomes a lie and common sense is heresy. This is worth remembering today, when the Solicitor General … has concluded that it is a prosecutable offence for a climate campaigner, Trudi Warner to hold up a sign outside a criminal court, simply proclaiming one of the fundamental principles of the common law.”
Writing in Prospect Magazine ahead of the decision, Alan Rusbridger, former Editor of the Guardian, suggested that if the case were to proceed, he’d be ready to hold up a sign himself:
“Trudi has single-handedly made the law look an ass. It is incredible, with a 66,000-case backlog in the criminal justice system, that a single hour of court time is wasted on trying to convict and jail her.”
Michel Forst, the UN Special Rapporteur for Environmental Defenders, spoke out publicly against these rulings in an extraordinary statement in January:
“I was … alarmed to learn that, in some recent cases, presiding judges have forbidden environmental defenders from explaining to the jury their motivation for participating in a given protest or from mentioning climate change at all.
It is very difficult to understand what could justify denying the jury the opportunity to hear the reason for the defendant’s action, and how a jury could reach a properly informed decision without hearing it, in particular at the time of environmental defenders’ peaceful but ever more urgent calls for the government to take pressing action for the climate.”
Why is it so important that the jury is able to hear the defendant’s reasons? Human actions can only be understood in their proper context. If a woman charged with assaulting her husband has been subjected to violent domestic abuse at his hands, the jury cannot do justice to the case if that history is concealed.
I once deliberately broke the door of a public toilet. If I had been charged with vandalism I would have needed to explain that my daughter was locked inside it and couldn’t get out!
If those charged with an offence of public nuisance have taken action only because they are in fear for their own lives, the lives of their children and the wider public, the jury should likewise be able to take that into account.
Let’s hope the justice system will now regain some sanity.
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