«Never again is now» is such a good slogan
Direct link to the text of his full closing speech which is excellent.
The judge interrupted several times in the first few sentences, telling Olax that references to Genocide were inadmissible. Court security were then ordered to remove Olax to the cells, and the judge summed up the case and sent the jury away to deliberate without the defendant present.
Unusually, Olax was not even returned to the court to hear the verdict.
Hmmm yes much legal system, very justice.
“Israel is committing genocide” is not relevant to a charge of criminal damage. English law does not recognise “I was protesting something grievously wrong” as a general defence, and nor should it - so trying to lead the jury to be sympathetic because they agree with your message instead of finding according to the law would indeed be unjust.
nor should it
Hard disagree there. How to create such a system is a separate question though, that much I will grant.
would indeed be unjust
It wouldn’t be “correct” in the application of the law. That wouldn’t make it unjust necessarily. Law is not the same as justice, it’s just our best effort.
Law in capitalist countries is not an effort towards justice, it is an effort towards protecting private property and the rights of capitalists.
The law, incidentally, is also what makes it illegal for said capitalists to kill you for example. Why do you think they always want their industries deregulated, E.g when it comes to safety regulations.
Doesn’t get much better under communism either since party elites are allowed to do anything they want and enrich themselves in the process.
But it is our best effort. I don’t think even an abstract concept of justice is served by taking into account political motivation for your actions unless you apply the principle blindly. Do you think someone spraying right-wing slogans like “deport all migrants” or “traitors” or just “fuck you” on RNLI buildings should be off the hook because they think there’s an existential threat to the country from a trickle of refugees? Do you think they should be allowed to bring up those beliefs in court?
Besides assigning consequences to bad actions, justice must in the first instance be fair. I see no fair way to privilege motivations that I sympathise with (anti-Israeli-genocide) but not ones that I find detestable (anti-immigrant).
If this is y’alls best effort y’all kinda suck at this ngl
Why even have a jury?
To determine facts. For them to be able to do that, they need to not be subjected to irrelevant emotional arguments.
Throughout these comments I’ve been asking what people think if the slogan had instead been “deport all immigrants” - do you have a view on whether a jury should hear a defendant’s motivation for spraying something like that?
Disagree. Juries are there to determine justice, not facts, as much as our legal system would like you to believe otherwise.
Why would you need a jury to determine facts?
I don’t have the inclination to quote standard legal theory at you, it’s not like I’m on crackpot territory here
It’s a valid question. If this were about fact finding, a judge should be more capable than random people.
Yes they should.
Ok. I don’t, that sounds like it would lead to a lot of bad outcomes as well as giving an opportunity for terrible people to grandstand and waste time.
More of a strict letter of the law than a spirit of the law kinda guy, eh?
There’s nothing in the spirit of the law that is supposed to allow people to air their grievances in court, so no. What I’m against is adding that to the spirit of the law.
And the reason is because I think there’s no fair way to do it that doesn’t open the way for awful people to abuse it. And what I definitely am for is fairness.
Ah ok, so it’s easy - just allow all good things in the courtroom but ban the bad ones. I wish I’d thought of that. I must be a fucking moron I guess.
It seemed pretty easy for the jury.
What do you think when a jury makes a decision you disagree with?
Actually, you don’t want an honest discussion so that’s a question for you to ask yourself; I won’t be reading your reply.
University of Birmingham disagrees: https://academic.oup.com/ojls/article/45/2/329/8078322?login=false they say that it should be a legal defence.
They’re welcome to say that. I’ll stick with my own beliefs and those of the judge in this case though, after a brief read of some of that long paper. You’re welcome to make the case, though.
I’m sorry. You’re beliefs don’t matter. Only facts.
The judge, Mr Recorder M Chawla KC, withdrew any lawful defences from Olax Outis, who, continuing their protest, refused to stand for the judge throughout the trial, instead only standing out of respect for the jury whenever they were brought in or out of the court.
So fucking based.
Its a short article, but it actually feels good to read. The judge tried to fuck him over and the guy represented himself, but the jurors saw through the bullshit.
Every now and then the good guys win one.
Love that while the UK leadership may be a lot of racists and bigots, the people luckily aren’t pieces of shit. Hopefully they can vote in better representation to reflect that in coming elections.
I think he represented his position well.
Wow, love seeing good news sometimes
Based
This garbage article doesn’t mention what he was charged with. After a search, turns out he was charged with criminal damage, and his main defence seems to be that he used washable paint so didn’t damage anything. Nonetheless the prosecution claim it cost £7000 to clean off.
I think people unquestioningly celebrating his acquittal need to think more carefully about it. If he’d just sprayed a shitty tag on a major statue or public building, presumably you’d all think that was wrong and would deserve some punishment, even if small. Even if the paint were washable, if it cost a lot to clean. But if it’s the content of the message that determines legality, as judged subjectively by a jury, we’re going to have some dark acquittals in the future. The fact that a jury happens to agree with the message is not a good way of judging guilt and innocence. The principle of rule of law is that the law takes a certain amount of blindness to things, to prevent it being abused.
The article does point out that the victim had been imprisoned for 6 months at that point. That’s already disproportionate punishment for writing a slogan with washable paint on the likeness of some genocidal cunt. Would he have been put through that if he’s written some other message? I doubt it.
Yes that is what protest law is. You are not understanding free speech and the right to protest lol.
Free speech does not protect damaging property anyway.
I agree with the guy’s message, but all of y’all are having a hard time understanding how the legal system is supposed to work.
Justice is supposed to be blind and proceed according to the law.
If you don’t like the law, that’s where, you, as a citizen, and through your legislature, amend/create those laws.
That is why it is important to watchdog your legislators. They are the ones that are allowing this shit to happen in the first place.
Am I glad he was aquiited, absolutely. But the judge wasn’t wrong either.
Man, I love that fucking line, “Never again is now”.
free speech and right to protest aren’t the same in the UK as in the US.
Do you think that if a government made a law criminalizing having brown skin that a jury has a moral imperative to find brown people guilty?
I think the point of a jury is to apply justice to the legal system, and in fact their moral imperative is to acquit people who face unjust applications of the law or are victims of government oppression.
While I get your concern, that sort of undermines having a jury of your peers. If we’re solely judging by what the law says, why not just have a group of judges decide? Or voted-for representatives?
It being your peers is a counter balance to the power of bad laws being passed and providing the public a way to push back (when things are incorrect).
While you simultaneously (and fairly) worry about the will of the majority being able to run roughshod, I’d say that ability in the context of a jury is decently limited so the ability for a jury to rule this way provides a sufficient check on possible bad laws.
There are lots of good reasons for jury trials, I think the biggest one is that you get a slice of the population rather than whatever your population of judges happens to be. What you’re talking about amounts to jury nullification, which is a fact of jury trials but I don’t think many people would say is the purpose of them. The textbook distinction is that the judge interprets the law, and the jury decides facts as needed under that interpretation.
I think it would be good to think what might happen if someone were up in court for having spray-painted “deport all immigrants”, or a similar far-right slogan. (Perhaps more offensive? Perhaps more aggressive? You can imagine many.)
Such a person ought to be treated the same in the eyes of the law as anyone else performing the same actions - as long as his slogans don’t meet the threshold of specific hate crimes, he’d just be someone with a strongly held belief that his political leaders needed to change course. If a jury of his peers happened to be all Reform voters, that should not acquit him, in my opinion.
No, I definitely get what you mean; it makes sense.
I just…don’t know how you get around the fact that there’s nothing, really, to stop that. Theoretically, that’s why you have multiple jurors: as you said, to get a slice of the population (and, hopefully, offset or dampen any bias a homogeneous group would, otherwise, have). Having a properly diverse slice is, theoretically, the mechanism.
But – in addition to that – I think what you’re envisioning only fully and always works if we can assume that the laws are fair and that all those carrying out the law are working from good faith. Judges, being more knowledgeable of the law, make sense to interpret the law but I’ve definitely seen some absurdly biased reading of particular laws, as well; what do we do, then, as recourse if a blatant mistreatment of justice is occurring but, well, that’s what the law’s been interpreted as and, as the system exists, that’s what we’re supposed to take on its face? (I don’t know that it really fits since, in the end, it was the judge who made the decision and you’ve already mentioned they should be the ones to interpret but I’ve seen lawyers argue that those later found innocent should remain sentenced because they didn’t prove said innocence during their trial so, based on the procedure/practice of things, their innocence should be dismissed/ignored: https://www.injusticewatch.org/archive/2020/missouri-attorney-general-fights-exonerations/)
I think, ultimately, I’m less worried about a sense that it sets any kind of precedent for the law being interpreted on whim is the fact that it was a slice of the population. Generally, you’ll probably have someone who may want to more closely hew what the law is. The fact that the whole jury was in agreement might point to an issue with something and allow the people to otherwise push back on how their government is serving them. But I’d suspect outcomes like this to be outliers, rather than the norm.
(this is only personal – and, therefore, incidental to our conversation – but having seen the lack of easy recourse for people to put a check on their government over my time of being alive has made me more sympathetic to some avenues to overturn judges’ interpretation of the law, in some manner; I am slightly envious of the UK’s parliamentary sovereignty allowing to push back on the courts in a way that the U. S.'s congress simply cannot)
Mm thanks for this
I’m not sure you understand what the law is… The law is not a book of rules, it does not exist independently from its creators, it is the will of the people. If the people find someone not guilty, they’re not guilty. The law was invented by people and only exists to be an extension of the will of the people.
If ten people from a representative section of the population thinks someone is guilty or not guilty, that is the law. It doesn’t matter whether they did something or not, what they are deciding is whether they should be punished for it or not. That’s why there is a jury in the first place, otherwise you’d have a system based on accuracy, not on argument.
I understand that what you’re talking about could be understood to be “the law” but it’s not what I’m talking about when I use the word, and I don’t think it’s what most people understand by the word.
But OK, when you say “the law” you mean “what people get convicted for.” I’m saying this person probably should have been convicted, but you haven’t even said whether you agree, because picking a different definition for a word doesn’t help decide what should or should not happen.
The law is the will of the people so if they weren’t convicted they shouldn’t be. The law does not exist independently of humans, because it is an imaginary concept we made up.
So the law is just an excuse for us to punish the people we want to punish and not punish the people we don’t want to. All abstract concepts disappear when there are no more humans, so they are not things onto themselves.
Miscarriage of justice is impossible
Seems to be what you’re saying
Yes, because our system isn’t designed for justice. The police doesn’t try to find the truth, they just try to find someone to charge. The defender doesn’t try to find the truth, but to escape conviction for his client, likewise with the prosecutor. The judge is there to follow the letter of the law as well as possible, there is nobody that cares about justice.
The very idea that you need a prosecutor and a defender makes no sense if you think about it. At sociey that wanted justice would just have a bunch of independant experts colaborate to find the truth and sentence based on that.
The idea that the process of justice must be carried out like a competition in which both sides are trying to trip each other up and trying to win at any cost through manipulation and omission with no regards to truth or justice means that the system has no interest in either.
Edgy. There are standard arguments for why an adversarial legal system tends to achieve good outcomes. I’m not really interested in digging up standard arguments though so I guess we’ll leave it here.
I suppose jury could say it’s an improvement, not a damage. Or that 7k is ridiculous and hence throw out the case.
Oh, you still have jury trials? Must have been expected to receive less than 3 years in prison because they cancelled jury trials for all of them. Aren’t you glad you voted for labour?
No, they havent “cancelled” them. There is legislation going through which would restrict trial by jury for those offences, but it hasnt even reached the lords yet. That is likely to be where it is picked apart.
They already did it for a year or less in prison in 2020 and that is passed no?
You guys don’t seem very fucking worried about it.
