George Floyd

Oh sorry, I’m clearly on a par with Mark and need to learn!

Every day is a university lecture day, how I miss 40 years ago :relaxed: :laughing:
Every day you breath you learn.

1 Like

Er…Geoff, when Mark was talking about hippies and Kafka, I think he meant kaftans… :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Indeed. Do keep up Karen!

1 Like

On the Colston case a very interesting and thorough discussion by The Secret Barrister.

Well worth reading, especially if you wish to comment on this case, and shows how the jury would have been operating entirety within the remit of the law in reaching their verdict.

Especially point 9.

In fact triple especially point 9.

1 Like

Interesting Billy. I particularly enjoyed:

Allied to these criticisms has been a suggestion from certain commentators that it was somehow inappropriate for the jury to apply “values” in this case… it is hard to convey in sober terms how utterly batshit this proposition is.

That legal terminology?

2 Likes

Edward Colston statue case could be sent to appeal court

I doubt if she’ll go through with it Griffin. All the appeal court could do is clarify points of law arising out of the trial - but she’ll be advised that there are no such genuine points of law, and that any politicised ‘clarification’ risks making future convictions of protesters less likely.

The real problem for the right here is age. Right-wing views - especially around issues like racism and the environment - are far more prevalent among the elderly, and although the Tories have already raised the jurors upper age limit to 75 (in England & Wales), many towards the top end of the range seek exemption on health etc grounds - for obvious reasons - so juries still tend to be further left than the general population - and a lot further left than Tory Party membership (average age 72), most UK media, etc.

Another leftie myth -

That ‘full fact’ is over 4 years old Tim - before the influx of elderly Kippers, and the expulsion of moderate ‘one nation’ tories.
(And was only an aside in parentheses in my post anyway - it doesn’t affect the main points.)

I suspect you’re right - er, correct! - in saying that, And, of course, benches of magistrates tend to be at the other end of the age/sex/colour scale.

I’m not sure I see it as a “problem” – except when it leads to juries making aberrant decisions. (I’m in two minds as to whether the Bristol decision was “wrong”, but incline - as perhaps you do - to thinking that it’s their city, it’s an unusual case, and they were entitled to decide as they did.) It has often been said that the rules of evidence are there to restrict what jurors could be told. Juries taking into account non-evidential facts (for example, in rape trials, all sorts of prejudices and assumptions are probably what leads to such a dismal conviction rate, though there may also be a problem in how the current legislation is framed) upsets the delicate balance of our criminal justice system.

1 Like

So clearly your statement is also out of date, you can’t have it both ways. :grinning:

This is more recent and surprisingly the percentages of party membership for the over 40’s is fairly similar for Labour and the Tories -

75 or 57 is still pretty horrifying. Maybe not to those of you that are… well… but an average age of 57 (even if that is correct) is hardly something to champion now is it? 3 more years and it would still be ‘the pensioners party’ (well it would be had governments repeatedly moved the goalposts)

Yes I agree it’s a delicate balance. It would be silly to suggest that the jury system is perfect, or that juries never make mistakes - but critics of the system, and of this acquittal, I observe, never seem to to put forward an alternative. The right to trial by jury stems from Magna Carta in England - and was an aspect of earlier traditions in many other parts of the world - so is perhaps deserving of some respect.

The central points seem to me be

  • that any conception of ‘criminal damage’ must include something like the ‘lawful excuse’ provision (otherwise you end up in the situation I mentioned earlier, of getting mechanically sentenced because you had to break into your elderly neighbour’s house to assist them) - and this in turn must imply a judgement call
  • so the question is who makes that judgement? a case could be made for judges, but this would make little difference (in previous cases described in the report I also linked earlier, even when the judge directed the jury that ‘there was no defense in law’, the jury still acquitted the protesters

So what’s left? Only undermining the jury system itself, as far as I can see. Would the Tories go this far? Even though I think there are a hundred or so Tory MPs that are in fact some flavour of quasi-fascist, I think they will back off when it comes to it - if for no other reason than that it would split their own party.

Having said that, the example of the Republican Party in the US suggests otherwise. They too have decided to fight not only politically, but against demographic and generational change; the price of them winning is therefore inevitably abandoning democracy, the rule of law, etc - but they seem to be succeeding.

Surely you wouldn’t just break into your neighbour’s house you would at least 'phone the police first. The protesters may have been offended by the statue but was it their place to remove it? A convicted murderer explained the acceptance of guilt to me and that mitigating circumstances didn’t make you not guilty. He had undertaken numerous offending behaviour courses in order to progress from Category A to Category C. This verdict seems to go against everything he had learned in those courses.

I wasn’t suggesting the neighbour’s house thing was in any way analogous Rendi - it was simply an illustration of the necessity for the ‘lawful excuse’ provision. It’s easy to think of situations in which breaking somebody else’s property is the best course of action available, isn’t it?

But perhaps you should look at the link posted by @billybutcher in a reply on 7 Jan '22 - which makes the point that the protesters admitted helping to pull down the statue, etc, but did NOT admit guilt - they maintained their innocence, and this has now been confirmed.

I am obviously not a legal expert but as an ordinary person (just like most of the jurors I would think) I can’t see the difference. It is just lawyers being clever or is it the CPS using the wrong charge?

Have you read the article that I linked?

It explains, clearly, what must be proved by the prosecution in a case of criminal damage. The defendants maintained that the four pre-requisites could not be proved by the prosecution so they were not guilty of criminal damage.

The jury agreed with them (or found some other reason to acquit).

That’s how trial by jury works.

Yes I did read it. My problem is that they were involved in pulling the statue down so I think most people would consider them guilty of something. Of course the jury are free to come to whatever verdict they think fit. I just still think a guilty verdict with absolute discharge would have been an outcome that would have been easier to understand.

Yes, they were guilty of pulling down a statue that Bristolians had been trying to get removed for years.

What they were not guilty of was criminal damage.

However much YOU think otherwise, the jury disagrees.