A climate activist should not be prosecuted for holding a placard outside a criminal court telling jurors they could acquit defendants according to their conscience, a judge in London ruled on Monday.
\nRetired social worker Trudi Warner, 69, was accused of contempt of court for standing outside London\u2019s Inner London Crown Court with the placard last year ahead of a trial of environmental activists from the group Insulate Britain.
\nHer sign told jurors that \u201cyou have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience\u201d, which Warner says she displayed after a number of activists were barred from mentioning climate change as part of their defence in previous trials.
\nBritain\u2019s Solicitor General, one of the government\u2019s law officers, argued that Warner\u2019s protest was an attempt to interfere with the administration of justice by inviting jurors to give a particular verdict.
\nThis, he argued at a hearing last week, amounted to contempt of court, a criminal offence which can be punished by up to two years in prison and an unlimited fine.
\nBut Judge Pushpinder Saini dismissed the case on Monday, saying a criminal prosecution was a \u201cdisproportionate approach\u201d which unlawfully interfered with Warner\u2019s right to freedom of expression.
\nWarner said after the ruling: \u201cI simply wanted jurors to know their rights and I wanted jurors to be confident enough to be able to stand up to judges who were, in my opinion, acting unlawfully.\u201d
\nAsked if she would repeat her actions, Warner said: \u201cProbably.\u201d
\nWIDER CRACKDOWN
\nThe attempted prosecution of Warner comes amid a wider crackdown on protest movements in Britain and across Europe, as environmental activists use direct action protests to demand urgent government action against climate change.
\nBritain has given police wider powers to restrict peaceful protests, including by imposing conditions if a demonstration could cause \u201cserious disruption to the life of the community\u201d, which is currently subject to a legal challenge.
\nEnvironmental activists have in some cases defended themselves against charges of causing criminal damage, without disputing having done so, arguing owners would have consented to the damage had they known the full extent of climate change.
\nLast month, however, that defence was severely curtailed by the Court of Appeal, which ruled activists accused of criminal damage cannot rely on their political or philosophical beliefs.
\nWarner said outside court that the ruling had left activists with few legal defences, apart from jurors returning verdicts according to their conscience.
\n\u201cThe power rests with us and this is why jurors are a threat to the state,\u201d she said.
\n(Reuters)placard. climate activism, placard protest, contempt of court<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A judge in London ruled that a climate activist should not be prosecuted for holding a placard outside a criminal court telling jurors they could acquit defendants according to their conscience. Judge Pushpinder Saini dismissed the case, stating that criminal prosecution was a disproportionate approach that interfered with the activist’s right to freedom of expression. Warner displayed the sign to inform jurors of their rights and to challenge judges who she believed were acting unlawfully. The attempted prosecution of Warner is part of a wider crackdown on protest movements in Britain and Europe, particularly in relation to environmental activism and climate change protests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":9199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7481,4703,1972,195,3348,3894,1595,693,2460,5732,7483,932,2919,2464,3496,1850,4893,344,2083,201,5576,4540,415,3895,6242,582,5679,3879,450,5330,634,7482,184,1004,131,463,577,1812,1846,1906,494,380,6305,18],"class_list":["post-9198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other","tag-activism","tag-activist","tag-appeal","tag-britain","tag-change","tag-charges","tag-climate-activism","tag-climate-change","tag-community","tag-conditions","tag-contempt-of-court","tag-court","tag-criminal-court","tag-damage","tag-defendant","tag-defendants","tag-demand","tag-demonstration","tag-disruption","tag-europe","tag-fine","tag-freedom-of-expression","tag-government","tag-hearing","tag-judge","tag-justice","tag-law","tag-legal-challenge","tag-london","tag-officers","tag-opinion","tag-placard-protest","tag-police","tag-power","tag-prison","tag-protest","tag-protests","tag-rights","tag-threat","tag-trial","tag-uk","tag-us","tag-who","tag-world"],"acf":{"keyphrase":"","keywords":"","sourceimg":"","country-category":""},"yoast_head":"\n