Perverted Judicial System – #Filton10 Unjustly Imprisoned 81 Days

In recent years the state is very worried about this outcome of juries acquitting activists,  that it has actively perverted the judicial system to ensure guilty verdicts.

In 2020 when the statue of the infamous slave trader Colston was toppled in Bristol and dumped in the canal, four activists arrested for ‘criminal damage’ were acquitted by a jury in less than three hours – they accepted the defence argument that displaying of the statue – Colston’s continued veneration, was itself a criminal act of displaying indecent or abusive material in a vibrant multicultural city. Terrified by the legal precedent it set, the Attorney General, in an extraordinary act of political interference, appealed that the judge should not have given the jury the option to consider a principled defence argument. The Court of Appeal rubber stamped the governments position and so closed the door for such future defences.

The British colonial occupation in Northern Ireland introduced jury-less Diplock courts in the six counties because they feared that if a jury is randomly selected from the six counties then there is a good chance that many will be sympathetic to the cause of Irish liberation and feel that the colonial laws underpinning the occupation are themselves unjust and refuse to convict.

It only needs three conscientious jury members to have a hung jury. We are seeing a ground swell of support for Palestine and opposition to genocide in the UK, so the state is similarly trying to pervert the legal system to ensure guilty verdicts.