On Monday 15 April at 8:45am a group of local residents sat outside Bristol Crown Court holding what has become the most contentious sign in the UK legal system. They joined hundreds of others around England and Wales as part of the growing Defend Our Juries campaign – in solidarity with Trudi Warner.
Their signs display the centuries-old principle of ‘jury equity’, i.e. the right of all jurors in British courtrooms to acquit a defendant according to their conscience and irrespective of the directions of the judge.
Famously, in 1984, a jury acquitted the civil servant, Clive Ponting, on this principle after he exposed government misinformation to the public and Parliament concerning the ‘Falklands War’.
Trudi Warner to appear at High Court this week on Contempt of Court Charge
On 18 April the permission hearing for the Attorney General’s application to commit to prison Trudi Warner, retired social worker, will be heard in the Royal Courts of Justice. The basis of the application? Trudi held up a sign outside a court displaying the well-established principle of jury equity.
By displaying these signs the group are showing the ridiculous nature of the prosecution against Trudi Warner. Countless thousands of pounds of public money has been spent pursuing a pensioner for showing a sign that is literally on display inside the Old Bailey:
BREAKING: People replicating the act that saw Trudi Warner arrested and facing prison time at Crown Courts across England & Wales 🧵(live)
Trudi, a 69yr old retired social worker will attend the Royal Courts of Justice this Thursday for holding a sign with the law written on it. pic.twitter.com/kBXj8Xo82S
— Defend our Juries (@DefendourJuries) April 15, 2024
The government campaign has gone as far as arresting two young women and questioning 24 others, although tellingly, after almost a year, no charges have been brought against them.
Collective action works
There are strong indications that united, collective action to defend the principle of jury equity is proving effective. Just days after the Solicitor General’s announcement to prosecute Warner, 252 people gathered outside 25 crown courts across England and Wales, holding similar signs in solidarity with Trudi Warner.
None were arrested and there has been no indication of a police investigation since then. An investigation into people previously arrested for displaying posters with the same message has now been discontinued. In December last year, over 500 people gathered to display the same message at over 50 crown courts, again none were arrested.
In February this year, 300 signed a letter to the new Solicitor General saying “since you’re prosecuting Trudi Warner, you should prosecute us too”.
As Trudi Warner’s permission hearing is heard this week in the Royal Courts of Justice, hundreds of people are expected to defend the message of jury equity outside every crown court in England and Wales.
The Defend our Juries campaign has gathered powerful support from eminent professors of law, such as Professor Richard Vogler and Professor John Spencer. In the words of Professor Vogler:
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 now that the solicitor general, Michael Tomlinson KC, has concluded that it is right to take action against… Trudi Warner, for holding up a sign outside a criminal court, simply proclaiming one of the fundamental principles of the common law: the right of a jury to decide a case according to its conscience.
Mounting concern over jury trial
The demonstrations come amid mounting public concern that political trials are being turned into show trials, after a succession of jury acquittals, including the acquittal of the Colston 4 in January 2022, have embarrassed the Government and certain corporate interests.
In the Colston case, Suella Braverman, who was Attorney General at the time, decided that the jury of Bristol people had got it wrong, and brought a successful appeal to the Court of Appeal, changing the law.
Measures being taken by courts in response include defendants being banned from explaining to the jury why they did what they did, even people who have taken peaceful direct action are now being sent to prison for up to 3 years.
In some cases, people have been sent to prison just for trying to explain their actions to the jury for saying the words ‘climate change’ and ‘fuel poverty’ in court. Defendants are banned from explaining the principle of ‘jury equity’ to the jury, even though it is a well established principle of law, which is set in marble at the original entrance to the Old Bailey.
Defendants have been found guilty after a judge threatened jurors with criminal charges if they applied their conscience to the trial. Legal defences have been removed by the Court of Appeal, leaving people unable to properly explain their motivations for taking action to juries, and declaring evidence of the climate crisis ‘inadmissible’.
Local residents take action in solidarity with Trudi Warner
Explaining why she is prepared to risk arrest for this legal principle, local resident Kingsley Belton, a retired speech and language therapist and a Quaker from Nailsea, said:
I’m taking action, sitting outside Bristol crown court, because I’m very concerned about the erosion of our robust jury system by this Government and by the judges, that are making the decision that somebody standing silently being a human billboard is somehow in contempt of court, when all that they are stating is what is down in law since the 1600’s. If our basic right to trial by jury is undermined then we cease being a democracy, and rapidly become a much more authoritarian state.
Adrienne Preedy from Bath said:
The public are mostly unaware of the dangerous erosion to our democracy that’s happened recently, due to banning defendants from explaining their motivations in court. I think most people would agree that it’s crazy – and an enormous waste of public money – to prosecute Trudi Warner for having stood up to the judiciary on this. All she did is hold up a sign that literally states the law. Where does it end? We are all Trudi.
Dave Ware, a chartered engineer from Bath said:
I can’t be a bystander while fellow activists undergo trials where they are banned from telling the jury their truth. Not being allowed to explain the context for an action significantly alters a juror’s perception of it. For example, breaking down a door and entering a house is not breaking and entering if the house is on fire and people in the house need to be rescued. It’s vital that the public is made aware of what’s going on in our courts. They would be horrified by the prosecution of Trudi for challenging this unfairness.
Featured image and additional images via Defend Our Juries
