I remember the fighter jet case, but I think this was about committing a crime to prevent a bigger crime. It's often said that juries would acquit in capital cases, to prevent someone being hung for theft
I'm trying to get at whether you think destruction of statues, memorials, etc is a legitimate form of political protest in all cases, or whether it's more of an "it's OK when people I agree with do it, but not when people I disagree with do it" sort of thing.
I think there's an excluded middle here. It's rather "it's OK when it fits under one of the defences available for the offence and the jury accepts that defence."
Another way of putting the question is whether these defences ought to have been left with the jury in the first place. I assume that would be the legal question on any appeal.
I gather from the BBC article that as a matter of procedure in the UK the Crown would not be entitled to another trial even if the Court of Appeal agreed with them that the defences were not valid defences, or in any event, not available to the accused based on the evidence presented in this case. (Canadian procedure is different.) There may still be value in clarifying the law on this point though.
I'm trying to get at whether you think destruction of statues, memorials, etc is a legitimate form of political protest in all cases, or whether it's more of an "it's OK when people I agree with do it, but not when people I disagree with do it" sort of thing.
I think there's an excluded middle here. It's rather "it's OK when it fits under one of the defences available for the offence and the jury accepts that defence."
Another way of putting the question is whether these defences ought to have been left with the jury in the first place. I assume that would be the legal question on any appeal.
That's rather the whole point of the jury - it's their job to decide if the defence is sound.
I gather from the BBC article that as a matter of procedure in the UK the Crown would not be entitled to another trial even if the Court of Appeal agreed with them that the defences were not valid defences, or in any event, not available to the accused based on the evidence presented in this case. (Canadian procedure is different.) There may still be value in clarifying the law on this point though.
Quite. Double jeopardy is disapproved of in legal circles as it can result in the Crown pursuing someone until they get the conviction they want. Legal minds are far from convinced this would favour justice. It rather reminds me of the case referenced upthread against those Quakers.
The law appears to be clear enough already, except to the right-wing *Is Outrage* brigade.
I think English law defines criminal damage as being "without lawful excuse", upon which much seemed to hinge. One lawful excuse is to prevent a crime, anyway, not about to rehash the trial.
And when the new Crime Bill was being framed there was much fury that the law prized statues above crimes against the person - Sky news coverage, in response to the toppling of the Colston statue:
Measures in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill include increasing the maximum penalty for criminal damage to a memorial from three months to 10 years.
That bill is still in progress through the House of Commons. Possibly some of this jury decision is a revolt against this bill.
And when the new Crime Bill was being framed there was much fury that the law prized statues above crimes against the person - Sky news coverage, in response to the toppling of the Colston statue:
Measures in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill include increasing the maximum penalty for criminal damage to a memorial from three months to 10 years.
That bill is still in progress through the House of Commons. Possibly some of this jury decision is a revolt against this bill.
That's rather the whole point of the jury - it's their job to decide if the defence is sound.
Objection, m'lud.
The whole point of the jury is to decide if the prosecution is sound. The usual direction given by the judge is that the jury have to find that the Crown has proved its case beyond reasonable doubt. If the Crown is lacking in sufficient parts, then the jury ought to acquit.
Statutory defences aside (self-defence being the obvious one), the jury can - and obviously do - take account to anything the defendant says to explain why they did what the prosecution alleges. It's technically not a 'defence', but rather an explanation, and the defendant is essentially throwing themselves on the mercy of the court.
And when the new Crime Bill was being framed there was much fury that the law prized statues above crimes against the person - Sky news coverage, in response to the toppling of the Colston statue:
Measures in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill include increasing the maximum penalty for criminal damage to a memorial from three months to 10 years.
The maximum penalty available for criminal damage to a person (murder, or rape, for example) is imprisonment for life.
Mr. Lammy is comparing the starting tarrif for rape (5 years in prison) with the maximum penalty for damaging a statue under this proposed Bill.
I can't respond to your point on this thread as it is a tangent to the topic of the trial and acquittal of those who pulled down the statue. I did think the general anger about the terms of a bill going through Parliament which terms are drawn up partly in response to the original offence is relevant.
I did think the general anger about the terms of a bill going through Parliament which terms are drawn up partly in response to the original offence is relevant.
Well, it's not like increasing the possible penalties for destroying a memorial is going to make it more likely that a jury would convict in these sorts of circumstances.
I suppose one could argue that potential future statue vandals might be dissuaded by being at risk of greater punishment.
I think, on the general subject of statues and memorials, you can distinguish between things like the actions against this particular statue of a slave trader (because he's murdering scum who is unworthy of commemoration), and things that are more like anti-war or anti-capitalist protesters throwing paint on war memorials, where the protesters have an animus against more general concepts rather than the individuals who are named on the memorial.
I'm reliably informed that protesters are aiming to cause damage over the £5000 threshold on purpose to get a jury trial. Below that, it's the magistrates court only - but above is an either-way offence and the defendant can elect for trial.
Whether throwing paint at a statue will push the damages above the threshold is a matter of careful calculation for the thrower.
Am I right in thinking that a lot of people, maybe 40 or more, were involved in this event and that the 'Four' were just ones that were able to be identified with CCTV?
And if so then, in some way, scapegoats?
(as an aside: I am really appreciating the calibre of debate on this thread)
The whole point of the jury is to decide if the prosecution is sound. The usual direction given by the judge is that the jury have to find that the Crown has proved its case beyond reasonable doubt. If the Crown is lacking in sufficient parts, then the jury ought to acquit.
That should, of course, read: If the Crown is lacking in sufficient parts, then the jury must acquit. The judge is required to direct them accordingly.
I am definitely not a lawyer but there's some important points here:
1. The statute does specify that damage has to be done to property. Whatever the intent was, it is indeed arguable that with the increase in value of the statue, no such criminal damage occurred.
2. Lawful excuse. It is indisputable that the defendants could have a lawful excuse. It is for the judge to direct the jury as to what is a potential lawful excuse and then for the jury to decide if the facts meet the definition.
3. (I wasn't properly aware of this one) but it is also for the jury to decide if the prosecution by the Crown is proportional.
I will come back to 2, lawful excuse, in a moment but clearly, there are 3 different reasons here why the jury may decide to acquit here. Indeed the prosecution needs to prove to the jury that these 3 don't apply.
So lawful excuse; I think it is easy to imagine quite a few possibilities here. If I parked my car, blocking access to a house. If an ambulance needed to get to said house to provide emergency medical attention to someone inside, I would not be surprised if someone committed (what would otherwise be) criminal damage to my vehicle in order to access said property and save life. Much like the self-defence principles in English Law, there are clear potential defences.
A hypothetical, that I think worth considering is this one; what if I erected a statue of Adolf Hitler outside of Tottenham Hotspur's stadium. I would not be surprised if such a statue was subsequently defaced. I would also not be surprised if the person doing so felt they had lawful excuse. Finally, I would not be surprised if a jury agreed.
Just my thoughts... but as I see it, there are several reasons the jury might have decided to acquit.
alienfromzog - A very quick answer to the above. Your first point confuses damage with damages. The toppled statue may well now be worth more, but surely removal from its base is by itself damage.
I've not noticed this term used, but does Britain not have jury nullification? Is that not what happened here, or something else? Someone above noted a Canadian jury refused to convict a doctor (? I presume - men generally do not themselves have abortions) for violating an anti-abortion statute, which seems a prime example of jury nullification.
The basic idea is the jury can say "stuff the law, stuff the judge's instructions, stuff the facts of the case" and vote "not guilty" at their discretion. Usually because they think some injustice is being perpetrated under cover of law enforcement and/or jurisprudence. Juries voting to acquit because they think killing someone for stealing bread is wrong, are practicing nullification. It's legal in the US, but it's illegal for anybody in the courtroom to tell the jury about it! But not illegal for jurors to discuss it in the jury room.
Thank you. I know the concept but not the name. Given that jurors here are under an oath of secrecy, who can tell how often it does, or does not, occur? I can see why a judge would not give instructions to jurors that they were entitled to do it.
That's interesting. I believe here the jurors are released from secrecy once a verdict is delivered. At least, the two cases I was on as a juror, we were allowed to talk with the defense and prosecution teams after the case if we chose to. One case we wished the prosecutors (who were Army - the alleged crime took place on the army base, but for some reason they chose to try it in civilian court) had come out -- we could have told them what they could have done to get a conviction. We all agreed we were sure the guy was guilty, but that was a hunch -- we didn't have evidence according to the rules set down by the judge. We all said, "If only the prosecutors had said XXXX, we could have voted to convict." But they didn't, so we couldn't. We wanted to tell the prosecutors that, but they bailed immediately after the trial.
Just as an aside, Canadian law does not recognize jury nullification. A lawyer who asks a jury to acquit because they don’t agree with the law is setting himself (herself/themself) up for a very bad day in Court. This was clarified by the appellate courts in one of the Morgentaler cases.
The practical reality in common law jurisdictions that I am aware of is that the Crown’s right of appeal from acquittal is limited and generally does not allow Crown appeals on the basis of allegations of unreasonable findings of fact. So a trier of fact (judge or jury) who is hellbent on acquitting for reasons good, bad, or ugly can generally find a way of doing so in a way that cannot be appealed.
That's interesting. I believe here the jurors are released from secrecy once a verdict is delivered. At least, the two cases I was on as a juror, we were allowed to talk with the defense and prosecution teams after the case if we chose to. One case we wished the prosecutors (who were Army - the alleged crime took place on the army base, but for some reason they chose to try it in civilian court) had come out -- we could have told them what they could have done to get a conviction. We all agreed we were sure the guy was guilty, but that was a hunch -- we didn't have evidence according to the rules set down by the judge. We all said, "If only the prosecutors had said XXXX, we could have voted to convict." But they didn't, so we couldn't. We wanted to tell the prosecutors that, but they bailed immediately after the trial.
It may have been they couldn’t have said it because they couldn’t prove it, and/or it wasn’t true. In which case you did the right thing by voting to acquit.
The jury confidentiality regime in the US is very different from other common law jurisdictions I’m aware of, and it seems to completely change the dynamic of a jury trial in some ways. We have basically a “black box” theory of the jury in Canada - the lawyers know virtually nothing about them when they are selected, and find out nothing about the decision-making process on the way out. The American rules have made social science research into jury thinking possible in a way that it isn’t in other countries, but they also leave open much more scope for jury shopping and jury manipulation.
Just as an aside, Canadian law does not recognize jury nullification. A lawyer who asks a jury to acquit because they don’t agree with the law is setting himself (herself/themself) up for a very bad day in Court. This was clarified by the appellate courts in one of the Morgentaler cases.
I said that about here, also. No one is allowed to tell the jury about nullification, except other jurors in the jury room.
The jury confidentiality regime in the US is very different from other common law jurisdictions I’m aware of, and it seems to completely change the dynamic of a jury trial in some ways. We have basically a “black box” theory of the jury in Canada - the lawyers know virtually nothing about them when they are selected, and find out nothing about the decision-making process on the way out. The American rules have made social science research into jury thinking possible in a way that it isn’t in other countries, but they also leave open much more scope for jury shopping and jury manipulation.
I would warn against conflating juries talking after the trial with voir dire. The latter is where juries are shopped for / packed. But they are unrelated.
I've not noticed this term used, but does Britain not have jury nullification? Is that not what happened here, or something else?
I used this very term in my post a page or so ago, where I said that I didn't buy the legal arguments for innocence, and thought this was pretty clear-cut jury nullification.
(I didn't mean 'scapegoats' in the strict sense of the word -just that I can't think of the right word)
There is no kind of rule or principle that says that if you only catch some of the participants in a crime, you should let them go unpunished because it wouldn't be fair. In this case, four people who had played significant roles in the removal and disposal of the statue were identified and tried. That's entirely reasonable, and the fact that other people were involved isn't very relevant.
If the four people tried were more or less bystanders who gave the statue a bit of a kick after some unknown third parties had done the major destruction, I could go along with your idea. But they weren't.
1. The statute does specify that damage has to be done to property. Whatever the intent was, it is indeed arguable that with the increase in value of the statue, no such criminal damage occurred.
If Banksy comes and paints one of his artworks on the side of my house, he commits criminal damage - or at least, he does if I don't want a Banksy on the side of my house, and incur costs to restore it to its original condition. Of course, if I keep the artwork, or say "thank you very much, Mr. Banksy" and turn around and sell my wall for more than the price of the house, I haven't been damaged.
In this case, there were clearly significant costs incurred to recover and restore the statue, and I'd need a lot of persuading that some claim of increase in value due to historic significance was real. The defence of one of the people involved claimed that the value of the statue had increased 50-fold, but unless someone actually makes a genuine offer to purchase the statue for that sort of price, then the opinion of an art valuer is largely fictional. (Frankly, if Bristol City Council now owns a statue of a dead slave trader worth a six figure sum, it should sell it.)
IMO, I think the defences of lawful excuse require some degree of urgency. If you park your car in the way of a fire hydrant and there's a fire, don't be surprised if you find that you need new windows because there's now a fire hose running through your car. That's a lawful excuse - there's a fire, and the fire department needs the hydrant. It is not lawful, however, for a passing fire crew to smash your windows because they don't like the fact that you parked by the hydrant. In that case, their lawful recourse is to get on the radio and have a police officer come by to issue you a ticket.
If someone puts up an offensive statue, and you immediately remove it so that people can't see it, then I could buy the necessary urgency. If the statue has been there for decades, it's much more difficult to argue the urgency.
It's also going to be easier to argue lawful excuse of the thing that you do prevents the offensive statue from being seen by others. Removing the Colston statue achieves this. Throwing paint at a statue, or writing "racist scum" or something on it doesn't prevent the statue from being seen. You'd have to argue that defacing the statue made it less offensive, which you might manage, but would seem like a bit of a stretch to me.
I've not noticed this term used, but does Britain not have jury nullification? Is that not what happened here, or something else?
I used this very term in my post a page or so ago, where I said that I didn't buy the legal arguments for innocence, and thought this was pretty clear-cut jury nullification.
The practical reality in common law jurisdictions that I am aware of is that the Crown’s right of appeal from acquittal is limited and generally does not allow Crown appeals on the basis of allegations of unreasonable findings of fact.
That is certainly the position in my State and I'm as sure as I can be that it would be the same in the other States and Territories as well.
The jury confidentiality regime in the US is very different from other common law jurisdictions I’m aware of, and it seems to completely change the dynamic of a jury trial in some ways. We have basically a “black box” theory of the jury in Canada - the lawyers know virtually nothing about them when they are selected, and find out nothing about the decision-making process on the way out. The American rules have made social science research into jury thinking possible in a way that it isn’t in other countries, but they also leave open much more scope for jury shopping and jury manipulation.
That puts our position very neatly. I suspect that much the same applies in the non-Scotland parts of the UK (I have no idea about Scots law with some very limited exceptions).
If Banksy comes and paints one of his artworks on the side of my house, he commits criminal damage - or at least, he does if I don't want a Banksy on the side of my house, and incur costs to restore it to its original condition. Of course, if I keep the artwork, or say "thank you very much, Mr. Banksy" and turn around and sell my wall for more than the price of the house, I haven't been damaged.
Indeed, if you chose to paint over it, Banksy would have no grounds for complaint.
I've not noticed this term used, but does Britain not have jury nullification? Is that not what happened here, or something else?
I used this very term in my post a page or so ago, where I said that I didn't buy the legal arguments for innocence, and thought this was pretty clear-cut jury nullification.
(I didn't mean 'scapegoats' in the strict sense of the word -just that I can't think of the right word)
There is no kind of rule or principle that says that if you only catch some of the participants in a crime, you should let them go unpunished because it wouldn't be fair. In this case, four people who had played significant roles in the removal and disposal of the statue were identified and tried. That's entirely reasonable, and the fact that other people were involved isn't very relevant.
If the four people tried were more or less bystanders who gave the statue a bit of a kick after some unknown third parties had done the major destruction, I could go along with your idea. But they weren't.
1. The statute does specify that damage has to be done to property. Whatever the intent was, it is indeed arguable that with the increase in value of the statue, no such criminal damage occurred.
If Banksy comes and paints one of his artworks on the side of my house, he commits criminal damage - or at least, he does if I don't want a Banksy on the side of my house, and incur costs to restore it to its original condition. Of course, if I keep the artwork, or say "thank you very much, Mr. Banksy" and turn around and sell my wall for more than the price of the house, I haven't been damaged.
In this case, there were clearly significant costs incurred to recover and restore the statue, and I'd need a lot of persuading that some claim of increase in value due to historic significance was real. The defence of one of the people involved claimed that the value of the statue had increased 50-fold, but unless someone actually makes a genuine offer to purchase the statue for that sort of price, then the opinion of an art valuer is largely fictional. (Frankly, if Bristol City Council now owns a statue of a dead slave trader worth a six figure sum, it should sell it.)
IMO, I think the defences of lawful excuse require some degree of urgency. If you park your car in the way of a fire hydrant and there's a fire, don't be surprised if you find that you need new windows because there's now a fire hose running through your car. That's a lawful excuse - there's a fire, and the fire department needs the hydrant. It is not lawful, however, for a passing fire crew to smash your windows because they don't like the fact that you parked by the hydrant. In that case, their lawful recourse is to get on the radio and have a police officer come by to issue you a ticket.
If someone puts up an offensive statue, and you immediately remove it so that people can't see it, then I could buy the necessary urgency. If the statue has been there for decades, it's much more difficult to argue the urgency.
It's also going to be easier to argue lawful excuse of the thing that you do prevents the offensive statue from being seen by others. Removing the Colston statue achieves this. Throwing paint at a statue, or writing "racist scum" or something on it doesn't prevent the statue from being seen. You'd have to argue that defacing the statue made it less offensive, which you might manage, but would seem like a bit of a stretch to me.
I think that's fair and reasonable. However, I would suggest that one would expect a defence barrister to be very zealous for their client and it's for the jury to decide if that defence is a stretch.
It's a very different thing to say "if I was on the jury, I would have voted to convict" than to say it's a perverse verdict.
AFZ
P.s. I also had the fire hydrant example in mind. Does the law require urgency for a lawful excuse?
Indeed - I've researched individual suffragettes. They were treated appallingly and often faced violence when being arrested too, but I'm no expert and there was also a big non-violent legal-means-only pro-women's emancipation movement of various groups (known as suffragists rather than suffragettes). I think I'm right in saying there's a historical argument over whether what the suffragette movement did was counter-productive - but am so out of my usual field that I don't like to say. Maybe @North East Quine would know better?
I think the honest answer is that it depends. If I lived back then, I might break a politician's window but I hope I wouldn't plant a bomb.
There's a big historical argument about it. Additionally, the argument as to whether the First World War would have resulted in the extension of the franchise even if the suffragettes hadn't used violence in their campaigns is a standard Scottish Higher History question. I don't know if that's also true of A levels.
The suffragists had been campaigning for years before some became exasperated and started using violent methods. There was a whole range of "direct action" by the suffragettes, and public opinion probably spanned a spectrum of opinion as to which direct actions went too far. E.g. stealing flags from golf courses and replacing them with flags which said "Votes for Women" would have had more public support than bombing St-Martins-in-the-Fields church, which resulted in the destruction of several windows and minor injuries from flying glass.
It's a massively complex subject, and it's only in recent years that small, local campaigns have received the research attention they deserve rather than the suffragettes being seen as a united body under the leadership of the Pankhursts.
But we seem to be straying from the O.P. issue. Would it be accurate to say that there are special circumstances in Bristol that may haveinfluenced the jury, and which do not apply to the same extent in the rest of the UK? or are we to expect the toppling of the statues of Generals Havelock and Napier, perhaps even Queen Victoria herself? (Though that would take a sizeable amount of dynamite, and possibly take out a sizeable chunk of Buck House at the same time.)
The jury is selected from the general area surrounding the court, so it's very likely that Bristolians would be both aware of the ongoing arguments regarding Colston, and also have an opinion about it.
While we can never know what would have happened with a different jury, it seems that this particular random group of locals were, having heard all the evidence, very much against convicting those who'd torn the statue down and thrown it in the harbour.
That doesn't strike me as a special circumstance, but an in-built feature of jury trials.
If Banksy comes and paints one of his artworks on the side of my house, he commits criminal damage - or at least, he does if I don't want a Banksy on the side of my house, and incur costs to restore it to its original condition. Of course, if I keep the artwork, or say "thank you very much, Mr. Banksy" and turn around and sell my wall for more than the price of the house, I haven't been damaged.
Indeed, if you chose to paint over it, Banksy would have no grounds for complaint.
If I chose to paint over it, I'd be seeking damages from Mr. Banksy to pay for the cost of repainting my wall.
P.s. I also had the fire hydrant example in mind. Does the law require urgency for a lawful excuse?
Yes.
Section 5 (2) b i of the Criminal Damage Act 1971 says that an excuse may be lawful if the perpetrator holds the reasonable belief that the property, right or interest [that they were protecting by committing the damage] was in immediate need of protection.
"Immediate need" implies urgency - the thing that requires protection requires you to act now, rather than later. You might hazard an argument that an offensive statue is being continuously offensive, and so there is a permanent immediate need for remedy, but I'd think that was a fairly significant reach.
The suffragists had been campaigning for years before some became exasperated and started using violent methods
To come back a little to NEQ (thanks NEQ). This rings some bells for me with what happened in Bristol. People tried for years by conventional, indubitably law-abiding measures to get things done, only to be frustrated at every turn until things boiled over.
We'll never know what the jury thought but as they were a local jury, the effects of exasperation and frustration on their local community may have weighed with them. I don't think it's a reach at all for someone to think that over the years pressure has built up due to the frustration of peaceful ordinary solutions to create a sudden emergency situation.
To come back a little to NEQ (thanks NEQ). This rings some bells for me with what happened in Bristol. People tried for years by conventional, indubitably law-abiding measures to get things done, only to be frustrated at every turn until things boiled over.
We'll never know what the jury thought but as they were a local jury, the effects of exasperation and frustration on their local community may have weighed with them. I don't think it's a reach at all for someone to think that over the years pressure has built up due to the frustration of peaceful ordinary solutions to create a sudden emergency situation.
I don't think that's an emergency. It sounds like the start of a "straw that broke the camel's back" diminished responsibility type of argument, which is something a bit different.
With respect to the statue, the straw was the murder of George Floyd, and had nothing in particular to do with the statue at all. We're protesting about George Floyd's murder, and state-sponsored racism in general, and here's an example of our local state commemorating a slave trader! That's got to go!
The immediate motivation is clear. but I don't think it's terribly relevant to the immediacy of the lawful need to remove the statue.
Now I think more about it, I think I see what Wainwright was doing with his nonsense argument about "my clients increased the value of the statue, so no damage was done". I don't think he really thinks that's a genuine argument at all - I think he's sowing the field for a jury nullification vote, which is I think what happened.
He knows that there's not much sympathy for the statue of a slave trader, and he knows that there's widespread agreement with the proposition that the people of Bristol don't want to glorify slave traders, and shouldn't have to see that. So what he's really doing is providing the jury with enough vaguely plausible cover to help them pass the not guilty vote that he knows they want to.
As @Doc Tor and @Doublethink have mentioned already on this thread, juries are people, and not dispassionate computers, and that's a feature of the jury system.
(Before the statue was removed, it looks to me like the average local opinion was that the statue should remain, but should have an extra plaque explaining Colston's slave-trading. I think local opinion shifted significantly in the aftermath of its removal and the publicity of that act - there were a number of well-publicised statements by black Bristolians explaining how having a statue of a slave trader made them feel that I think shifted a lot of opinions. Disclaimer: I'm not from Bristol, but do have family in the area, so whilst I have some sort of sense of the local mood, I'll defer to shipmates who do live there on this subject.)
With respect to the statue, the straw was the murder of George Floyd, and had nothing in particular to do with the statue at all. We're protesting about George Floyd's murder, and state-sponsored racism in general, and here's an example of our local state commemorating a slave trader! That's got to go!
The casual horrific devaluation of Black lives would seem to me to be a commonality between enslavers and police officers who murder. Expecting Black people to just put up with public devaluation of their lives by the glorification of someone who was by his trade a mass-murderer on a scale way beyond Derek Chauvin might be something some people think is entirely reasonable and somehow not relevant to movements that affirm the value of Black lives, but I don't think it requires a huge leap of empathy to see why others might not think that way and might think 'this has to change and change now - people must understand this kind of thing is no longer morally OK'.
I don't think it requires a huge leap of empathy to see immediacy for those who felt that moment was the time they absolutely had to take a stand against the devaluation of Black lives if anything was to change. We'll never know if this was how the jury reasoned but it's one way of thinking about it.
... To come back a little to NEQ (thanks NEQ). This rings some bells for me with what happened in Bristol. People tried for years by conventional, indubitably law-abiding measures to get things done, only to be frustrated at every turn until things boiled over. ...
Not quite. I live not very far from where the statue was. Colston's name was well known. There were two schools and a concert hall called after him. He left a public charitable fund that was well known. However, apart from that, nobody was all that aware or conscious of who he was, what he might have done or the cloud that now hangs over him until the last 5+ years when he has become a sort of symbolic figure and rallying cry. Only today on the BBC I heard him being accused of paedophilia for which, as far as I know, there's no evidence whatsoever, apart from the assumption that as he invested in slaves, he must have been guilty of every other crime known to humanity.
His record has become an issue but it isn't fair to say that "people tried for years ... to get thing done". Whatever people might now say, this really is quite a recent issue. That's even apart from the city's having a reputation for being a place where things generally get argued about for years and years without anyone having the guts to take the decisions that need taking either to get anything done or to say 'we're not going to do it', viz rapid transit and getting Ashton Court refurbished, to name but two. Besides, like this thread, this is a city where everybody has an opinion and where there are more opinions than there are citizens.
According to Wikipedia Colston’s statue has been controversial since the 1990s* with calls for its removal, and controversy over an additional plaque for the statue with information about Colston’s slaving record. There is an account of the proposals for the plaque and some of the to-ing and fro-ing over them here. This particular phase of the controversy appears to have been running for at least six years.
(*Although at least one challenge in relation to the slave trade goes back to the early 1970s)
I suspect that the voices in different areas were saying different things, but at least one section of the community had been seeing the statue as problematic for some time.
This article from 2020, just after the statue was toppled links to comments that suggest that it had been agreed in 2018 for a plaque explaining Colston's links to the slave trade to be added to the statue (from Professor Kate Williams on Twitter).
People who say - authorities should take statues down after discussion. Yes. But it isn't happening. Bristol'sbeen debating #EdwardColston for years and wasn't getting anywhere. In 2018, it was agreed that statue would bear a plaque noting his involvement in the slave trade. BUT
This article discusses the meanings of statues as part of an ongoing discussion by the RSA - there's an earlier report from 2015.
Jon Finch, head of culture and creative industries at Bristol City Council 'confirmed since the 1990s there have been campaigns and petitions to remove it.'
According to the paper, that's evidence he gave in court.
The protesters were 'lucky' to be able to topple the statue without the police stopping them.
From Wiki: The Superintendent of Avon and Somerset Police said that they had made a tactical decision not to intervene and allowed the statue to be toppled, citing concerns that stopping the act could have led to further violence and a riot.'
This sound like special pleading. It was an aberration of police policy. From now on, and especially with the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill on its way, I think any big protests are history. We are entering a new dark age of police power.
The protesters were 'lucky' to be able to topple the statue without the police stopping them.
From Wiki: The Superintendent of Avon and Somerset Police said that they had made a tactical decision not to intervene and allowed the statue to be toppled, citing concerns that stopping the act could have led to further violence and a riot.'
This sound like special pleading. It was an aberration of police policy.
The protesters were 'lucky' to be able to topple the statue without the police stopping them.
From Wiki: The Superintendent of Avon and Somerset Police said that they had made a tactical decision not to intervene and allowed the statue to be toppled, citing concerns that stopping the act could have led to further violence and a riot.'
This sound like special pleading. It was an aberration of police policy.
And an abdication of police responsibility.
The Police in Bristol probably did not have enough officers on duty to stop the act. It was a tactical decision not to make the attempt.
I'm sure that's right. But it was a Black Lives Matter protest not a campaign for free beer on the NHS. My concern is that any large protests will get closed down quickly by the police because, of course, any large gathering as the potential to turn into a riot.
Rights to free speech and association are under serious threat. The Greenham Common women and the anti-Brexit marches simply wouldn't be able to happen under the regime we have from now on. And remember the Sarah Everard vigil . From now on, forget it.
Comments
I remember the fighter jet case, but I think this was about committing a crime to prevent a bigger crime. It's often said that juries would acquit in capital cases, to prevent someone being hung for theft
Another way of putting the question is whether these defences ought to have been left with the jury in the first place. I assume that would be the legal question on any appeal.
I gather from the BBC article that as a matter of procedure in the UK the Crown would not be entitled to another trial even if the Court of Appeal agreed with them that the defences were not valid defences, or in any event, not available to the accused based on the evidence presented in this case. (Canadian procedure is different.) There may still be value in clarifying the law on this point though.
That's rather the whole point of the jury - it's their job to decide if the defence is sound.
Quite. Double jeopardy is disapproved of in legal circles as it can result in the Crown pursuing someone until they get the conviction they want. Legal minds are far from convinced this would favour justice. It rather reminds me of the case referenced upthread against those Quakers.
I think English law defines criminal damage as being "without lawful excuse", upon which much seemed to hinge. One lawful excuse is to prevent a crime, anyway, not about to rehash the trial.
That bill is still in progress through the House of Commons. Possibly some of this jury decision is a revolt against this bill.
Indeed. That whole Bill is revolting, IYSWIM.
The whole point of the jury is to decide if the prosecution is sound. The usual direction given by the judge is that the jury have to find that the Crown has proved its case beyond reasonable doubt. If the Crown is lacking in sufficient parts, then the jury ought to acquit.
Statutory defences aside (self-defence being the obvious one), the jury can - and obviously do - take account to anything the defendant says to explain why they did what the prosecution alleges. It's technically not a 'defence', but rather an explanation, and the defendant is essentially throwing themselves on the mercy of the court.
The maximum penalty available for criminal damage to a person (murder, or rape, for example) is imprisonment for life.
Mr. Lammy is comparing the starting tarrif for rape (5 years in prison) with the maximum penalty for damaging a statue under this proposed Bill.
What Mr. Lammy is doing here is lying.
Well, it's not like increasing the possible penalties for destroying a memorial is going to make it more likely that a jury would convict in these sorts of circumstances.
I suppose one could argue that potential future statue vandals might be dissuaded by being at risk of greater punishment.
I think, on the general subject of statues and memorials, you can distinguish between things like the actions against this particular statue of a slave trader (because he's murdering scum who is unworthy of commemoration), and things that are more like anti-war or anti-capitalist protesters throwing paint on war memorials, where the protesters have an animus against more general concepts rather than the individuals who are named on the memorial.
Whether throwing paint at a statue will push the damages above the threshold is a matter of careful calculation for the thrower.
And if so then, in some way, scapegoats?
(as an aside: I am really appreciating the calibre of debate on this thread)
That should, of course, read: If the Crown is lacking in sufficient parts, then the jury must acquit. The judge is required to direct them accordingly.
1. The statute does specify that damage has to be done to property. Whatever the intent was, it is indeed arguable that with the increase in value of the statue, no such criminal damage occurred.
2. Lawful excuse. It is indisputable that the defendants could have a lawful excuse. It is for the judge to direct the jury as to what is a potential lawful excuse and then for the jury to decide if the facts meet the definition.
3. (I wasn't properly aware of this one) but it is also for the jury to decide if the prosecution by the Crown is proportional.
I will come back to 2, lawful excuse, in a moment but clearly, there are 3 different reasons here why the jury may decide to acquit here. Indeed the prosecution needs to prove to the jury that these 3 don't apply.
So lawful excuse; I think it is easy to imagine quite a few possibilities here. If I parked my car, blocking access to a house. If an ambulance needed to get to said house to provide emergency medical attention to someone inside, I would not be surprised if someone committed (what would otherwise be) criminal damage to my vehicle in order to access said property and save life. Much like the self-defence principles in English Law, there are clear potential defences.
A hypothetical, that I think worth considering is this one; what if I erected a statue of Adolf Hitler outside of Tottenham Hotspur's stadium. I would not be surprised if such a statue was subsequently defaced. I would also not be surprised if the person doing so felt they had lawful excuse. Finally, I would not be surprised if a jury agreed.
Just my thoughts... but as I see it, there are several reasons the jury might have decided to acquit.
AFZ
Or at least one of the patter songs in a larger opera.
fall guys?
The practical reality in common law jurisdictions that I am aware of is that the Crown’s right of appeal from acquittal is limited and generally does not allow Crown appeals on the basis of allegations of unreasonable findings of fact. So a trier of fact (judge or jury) who is hellbent on acquitting for reasons good, bad, or ugly can generally find a way of doing so in a way that cannot be appealed.
It may have been they couldn’t have said it because they couldn’t prove it, and/or it wasn’t true. In which case you did the right thing by voting to acquit.
The jury confidentiality regime in the US is very different from other common law jurisdictions I’m aware of, and it seems to completely change the dynamic of a jury trial in some ways. We have basically a “black box” theory of the jury in Canada - the lawyers know virtually nothing about them when they are selected, and find out nothing about the decision-making process on the way out. The American rules have made social science research into jury thinking possible in a way that it isn’t in other countries, but they also leave open much more scope for jury shopping and jury manipulation.
I said that about here, also. No one is allowed to tell the jury about nullification, except other jurors in the jury room.
I would warn against conflating juries talking after the trial with voir dire. The latter is where juries are shopped for / packed. But they are unrelated.
There is no kind of rule or principle that says that if you only catch some of the participants in a crime, you should let them go unpunished because it wouldn't be fair. In this case, four people who had played significant roles in the removal and disposal of the statue were identified and tried. That's entirely reasonable, and the fact that other people were involved isn't very relevant.
If the four people tried were more or less bystanders who gave the statue a bit of a kick after some unknown third parties had done the major destruction, I could go along with your idea. But they weren't.
If Banksy comes and paints one of his artworks on the side of my house, he commits criminal damage - or at least, he does if I don't want a Banksy on the side of my house, and incur costs to restore it to its original condition. Of course, if I keep the artwork, or say "thank you very much, Mr. Banksy" and turn around and sell my wall for more than the price of the house, I haven't been damaged.
In this case, there were clearly significant costs incurred to recover and restore the statue, and I'd need a lot of persuading that some claim of increase in value due to historic significance was real. The defence of one of the people involved claimed that the value of the statue had increased 50-fold, but unless someone actually makes a genuine offer to purchase the statue for that sort of price, then the opinion of an art valuer is largely fictional. (Frankly, if Bristol City Council now owns a statue of a dead slave trader worth a six figure sum, it should sell it.)
IMO, I think the defences of lawful excuse require some degree of urgency. If you park your car in the way of a fire hydrant and there's a fire, don't be surprised if you find that you need new windows because there's now a fire hose running through your car. That's a lawful excuse - there's a fire, and the fire department needs the hydrant. It is not lawful, however, for a passing fire crew to smash your windows because they don't like the fact that you parked by the hydrant. In that case, their lawful recourse is to get on the radio and have a police officer come by to issue you a ticket.
If someone puts up an offensive statue, and you immediately remove it so that people can't see it, then I could buy the necessary urgency. If the statue has been there for decades, it's much more difficult to argue the urgency.
It's also going to be easier to argue lawful excuse of the thing that you do prevents the offensive statue from being seen by others. Removing the Colston statue achieves this. Throwing paint at a statue, or writing "racist scum" or something on it doesn't prevent the statue from being seen. You'd have to argue that defacing the statue made it less offensive, which you might manage, but would seem like a bit of a stretch to me.
Excellent. I missed it; sorry.
That is certainly the position in my State and I'm as sure as I can be that it would be the same in the other States and Territories as well.
That puts our position very neatly. I suspect that much the same applies in the non-Scotland parts of the UK (I have no idea about Scots law with some very limited exceptions).
Indeed, if you chose to paint over it, Banksy would have no grounds for complaint.
I think that's fair and reasonable. However, I would suggest that one would expect a defence barrister to be very zealous for their client and it's for the jury to decide if that defence is a stretch.
It's a very different thing to say "if I was on the jury, I would have voted to convict" than to say it's a perverse verdict.
AFZ
P.s. I also had the fire hydrant example in mind. Does the law require urgency for a lawful excuse?
There's a big historical argument about it. Additionally, the argument as to whether the First World War would have resulted in the extension of the franchise even if the suffragettes hadn't used violence in their campaigns is a standard Scottish Higher History question. I don't know if that's also true of A levels.
The suffragists had been campaigning for years before some became exasperated and started using violent methods. There was a whole range of "direct action" by the suffragettes, and public opinion probably spanned a spectrum of opinion as to which direct actions went too far. E.g. stealing flags from golf courses and replacing them with flags which said "Votes for Women" would have had more public support than bombing St-Martins-in-the-Fields church, which resulted in the destruction of several windows and minor injuries from flying glass.
It's a massively complex subject, and it's only in recent years that small, local campaigns have received the research attention they deserve rather than the suffragettes being seen as a united body under the leadership of the Pankhursts.
While we can never know what would have happened with a different jury, it seems that this particular random group of locals were, having heard all the evidence, very much against convicting those who'd torn the statue down and thrown it in the harbour.
That doesn't strike me as a special circumstance, but an in-built feature of jury trials.
If I chose to paint over it, I'd be seeking damages from Mr. Banksy to pay for the cost of repainting my wall.
Yes.
Section 5 (2) b i of the Criminal Damage Act 1971 says that an excuse may be lawful if the perpetrator holds the reasonable belief that the property, right or interest [that they were protecting by committing the damage] was in immediate need of protection.
"Immediate need" implies urgency - the thing that requires protection requires you to act now, rather than later. You might hazard an argument that an offensive statue is being continuously offensive, and so there is a permanent immediate need for remedy, but I'd think that was a fairly significant reach.
To come back a little to NEQ (thanks NEQ). This rings some bells for me with what happened in Bristol. People tried for years by conventional, indubitably law-abiding measures to get things done, only to be frustrated at every turn until things boiled over.
We'll never know what the jury thought but as they were a local jury, the effects of exasperation and frustration on their local community may have weighed with them. I don't think it's a reach at all for someone to think that over the years pressure has built up due to the frustration of peaceful ordinary solutions to create a sudden emergency situation.
But of course we'll never know.
I don't think that's an emergency. It sounds like the start of a "straw that broke the camel's back" diminished responsibility type of argument, which is something a bit different.
With respect to the statue, the straw was the murder of George Floyd, and had nothing in particular to do with the statue at all. We're protesting about George Floyd's murder, and state-sponsored racism in general, and here's an example of our local state commemorating a slave trader! That's got to go!
The immediate motivation is clear. but I don't think it's terribly relevant to the immediacy of the lawful need to remove the statue.
Now I think more about it, I think I see what Wainwright was doing with his nonsense argument about "my clients increased the value of the statue, so no damage was done". I don't think he really thinks that's a genuine argument at all - I think he's sowing the field for a jury nullification vote, which is I think what happened.
He knows that there's not much sympathy for the statue of a slave trader, and he knows that there's widespread agreement with the proposition that the people of Bristol don't want to glorify slave traders, and shouldn't have to see that. So what he's really doing is providing the jury with enough vaguely plausible cover to help them pass the not guilty vote that he knows they want to.
As @Doc Tor and @Doublethink have mentioned already on this thread, juries are people, and not dispassionate computers, and that's a feature of the jury system.
(Before the statue was removed, it looks to me like the average local opinion was that the statue should remain, but should have an extra plaque explaining Colston's slave-trading. I think local opinion shifted significantly in the aftermath of its removal and the publicity of that act - there were a number of well-publicised statements by black Bristolians explaining how having a statue of a slave trader made them feel that I think shifted a lot of opinions. Disclaimer: I'm not from Bristol, but do have family in the area, so whilst I have some sort of sense of the local mood, I'll defer to shipmates who do live there on this subject.)
The casual horrific devaluation of Black lives would seem to me to be a commonality between enslavers and police officers who murder. Expecting Black people to just put up with public devaluation of their lives by the glorification of someone who was by his trade a mass-murderer on a scale way beyond Derek Chauvin might be something some people think is entirely reasonable and somehow not relevant to movements that affirm the value of Black lives, but I don't think it requires a huge leap of empathy to see why others might not think that way and might think 'this has to change and change now - people must understand this kind of thing is no longer morally OK'.
I don't think it requires a huge leap of empathy to see immediacy for those who felt that moment was the time they absolutely had to take a stand against the devaluation of Black lives if anything was to change. We'll never know if this was how the jury reasoned but it's one way of thinking about it.
His record has become an issue but it isn't fair to say that "people tried for years ... to get thing done". Whatever people might now say, this really is quite a recent issue. That's even apart from the city's having a reputation for being a place where things generally get argued about for years and years without anyone having the guts to take the decisions that need taking either to get anything done or to say 'we're not going to do it', viz rapid transit and getting Ashton Court refurbished, to name but two. Besides, like this thread, this is a city where everybody has an opinion and where there are more opinions than there are citizens.
(*Although at least one challenge in relation to the slave trade goes back to the early 1970s)
This article from 2020, just after the statue was toppled links to comments that suggest that it had been agreed in 2018 for a plaque explaining Colston's links to the slave trade to be added to the statue (from Professor Kate Williams on Twitter).
This article discusses the meanings of statues as part of an ongoing discussion by the RSA - there's an earlier report from 2015.
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/controversial-colston-slave-trader-statue-6348343
Jon Finch, head of culture and creative industries at Bristol City Council 'confirmed since the 1990s there have been campaigns and petitions to remove it.'
According to the paper, that's evidence he gave in court.
The protesters were 'lucky' to be able to topple the statue without the police stopping them.
From Wiki: The Superintendent of Avon and Somerset Police said that they had made a tactical decision not to intervene and allowed the statue to be toppled, citing concerns that stopping the act could have led to further violence and a riot.'
This sound like special pleading. It was an aberration of police policy. From now on, and especially with the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill on its way, I think any big protests are history. We are entering a new dark age of police power.
And an abdication of police responsibility.
The Police in Bristol probably did not have enough officers on duty to stop the act. It was a tactical decision not to make the attempt.
Rights to free speech and association are under serious threat. The Greenham Common women and the anti-Brexit marches simply wouldn't be able to happen under the regime we have from now on. And remember the Sarah Everard vigil . From now on, forget it.