Upon giving evidence in a court of law in the UK (and including Scotland, whose law is slightly different), you are compelled to solemnly swear (upon your Holy Book if you're religious, but also just in general) that the evidence you give will be 'the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth'.
This is such a famous oath that it is known verbatim the world over, and has been repeated in countless media shows. At the time I started this blog in 2010, I was an AS-level law student, and I attended criminal cases myself at Bristol Crown Court and heard that oath uttered in person. I heard it again in 2015 as a Creative Performance undergraduate at Ipswich Crown Court, when as research for a piece of theatre I was involved in devising I attended several days of the trial of Eric de Smith, a retired headteacher who was ultimately jailed for sexually abusing several boys in his care. I was an absolutely terrible law student and I gave it up very quickly in favour of something I was a lot better at, but I have always found the law, and legal cases, absolutely fascinating and compelling.
One thing that I remember being one of the first things I learned when I became a law student is that every single legal case changes the law in some way. Another is that it's impossible for the law to be 100% fair. This is a hard truth you have to acknowledge if you take an interest in this kind of thing, because human beings are complex, there is very often context to what someone does outside of purely what their actions were, and legal cases rely very much on precedent. However, we can use our increasing development as human beings to make it as fair as it possibly can be, and we should. Thankfully, there have been many amazing people working on this throughout history, and there still are today.
It's really important that there continue to be amazing people working on it, because Friday 12 June marked an incredibly concerning moment in UK legal history. For the first time ever, a group of four defendants were convicted by a jury of one charge and sentenced by a judge for a different one. The group - Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Rajwani - were convicted by a jury of criminal damage after they entered the weapons factory Elbit Systems and damaged some property which was intended to be used as part of Israel's ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. We could debate at length whether a charge of criminal damage in this case is appropriate (these defendants had all previously been charged with, and subsequently found not guilty of, other charges, such as aggravated burglary and violent disorder). But subsequently to being found guilty of criminal damage, the judge in this case, Jeremy Johnson, added additional charges to the sentence so that the four could be found guilty of terrorism offences. Throughout the trial, that this was the judge's intention was explicitly kept from the jury during their deliberations, as was any means of being able to explain to the jury the reasons for their actions. Irrespective of what anyone thinks of what these protesters actually did, I think we should be able to agree that this is not in line with telling 'the whole truth', an essential part of the sworn testimony. It also cannot be considered a fair trial to extrapolate a jury's findings onto separate charges the jury was not made aware of. This could not be considered an appropriate use of the court's functions for any trial or any charge.
The terrorism charge means that each of them will serve more jail time than their actions otherwise would normally warrant (not including the jail time they've already served whilst awaiting trial, which is already a lot more than it's supposed to be). In addition, the terrorism charge will continue to stay with them upon release, which can significantly hinder their ability to gain paid employment and various other everyday necessities. I should reiterate, this is the outcome for a charge of criminal damage - something that has never warranted this kind of punishment before. One refrain that I've heard repeated quite a lot by people in social media comment threads is 'But they injured a police officer!', so I need to put this to bed. One of them did injure a police officer. That person was found by the jury guilty of GBH without intent - i.e. that he did not intend to cause the officer such a serious injury, as opposed to 'with intent', which is what the prosecution had charged him with. The sentencing guidelines for GBH without intent still do not resemble what he was actually sentenced for. The other three defendants were not involved in that incident at all, so it is irrelevant to their cases.
It's clear to me that the intent of this obscenely inappropriate sentence is highly political. The Government (both the current Labour administration and the previous Tory one) has been attempting to interfere in activism court cases for a number of years now, with varying degrees of success. These particular defendants have been in and out of court on quite a few attempts to convict them of various different charges; juries have consistently either found them not guilty or found them guilty of lesser charges than those they were in court for. This is proving quite inconvenient for the Government, to the extent that they're talking about scrapping jury trials (they say this is to clear the backlog, but the backlog doesn't actually have anything to do with juries).
To me though, the thing that's most concerning about this is the idea that it may deter others from taking the same sort of direct action. This kind of action should be taken. It saves lives. The weapons these individuals destroyed are weapons that would otherwise have been used to kill and maim innocent people, including children. They now will not be. There's countless petitions and vigils and marches and all sorts of other things that Governments do their utmost not to listen to, but damaging the equipment produces immediate results. I appreciate that not everyone feels comfortable doing that kind of thing. I appreciate that not everyone is able to put themselves in a position where they may be charged with a crime, particularly not if they may be charged as a terrorist (I think I'd have serious reservations about it myself). But the fact remains that I do think these kinds of things need doing, and I have the utmost respect for anyone who is prepared to do them. I have been absolutely in awe of some of the statements these activists have made (seriously, look them up if you haven't seen them). Ultimately, what they did saved innocent lives, which unfortunately in today's world is something that is considered more of a crime than the continual racial hate crimes, arson attacks and pogroms that have occurred in the UK over the last few weeks. This particular judge, Jeremy Johnson, released Tommy Robinson early from prison a few years ago. Clearly, Robinson's behaviour is considered to be less of a threat to public life than the actions of some incredibly brave individuals who concretely have saved lives. I'm really hopeful that their sentencing will be overturned on appeal.
And if you support the sentencing in this case even slightly, I ask you: can you justify, in any way, sentencing someone for a charge other than that which they were found guilty of? If you believe these individuals were terrorists, why was this information kept from the jury? If you want to have a conversation about that we can have that conversation - otherwise, any argument you can make in favour of this is a straw man.
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