Contempt threat against climate activist may undermine trial by jury, lawyers say | UK news

Leading lawyers have accused the government of undermining trial by jury after a climate activist was told she faces contempt proceedings over holding a sign outside court.

The placard allegedly held by Trudi Warner, 68, outside a trial of fellow climate activists in March, read: “Jurors: you have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.”

Warner was subsequently committed to the Old Bailey for contempt proceedings, where a high court judge referred the case to the solicitor general, Michael Tomlinson KC, to decide whether to proceed, or to charge her with attempting to pervert the course of justice. She has now been instructed to explain to Tomlinson why he should not bring contempt proceedings against her.

Warner’s supporters have said the threat undermines the “centuries old principle that jurors are entitled to acquit a defendant as a matter of conscience, irrespective of any directions of the judge”. The judge had ordered defendants not to mention the climate crisis or fuel poverty in their defence.

Lawyers also criticised Tomlinson’s move. Michael Mansfield KC, one of the UK’s leading barristers, said: “Jury trial is the jewel in the crown of the criminal justice system in the United Kingdom and has to be preserved and protected. The right of a jury to return verdicts according to their ‘convictions’ and ‘consciences’ has been enshrined since the trial of two Quakers in 1670 – William Penn and William Mead. It has been memorialised with a plaque in the Old Bailey. No defendant and no defence counsel should be prohibited from referencing this paramount feature of our system.”

Matt Hutchings KC, a barrister from London, said: “When people are charged with offences which they committed because of their sincere beliefs about the climate crisis, the jury should be allowed to hear evidence about these beliefs. It is not right that juries are prevented by judicial directions from hearing the truth about why the defendants are in the dock.

“The eminent judge Sir Patrick Devlin wrote in his book Trial by Jury that juries were ‘an insurance that the criminal law will conform to the ordinary man’s idea of what is fair and just’. At a time when our democratic values and institutions are under attack, it is vital that we defend one of our sacred democratic principles: the independence of juries.”

Bill Bowring, barrister and professor of law at Birkbeck, University of London, said: “The right of a jury to acquit despite a direction from the judge that there is no defence, known in the US and UK as jury nullification, jury equity, or a ‘perverse verdict’, has been an essential feature of trial by jury in common law countries for centuries … this right must be defended unconditionally, and the present attacks on it would fatally damage trial by jury.”

In a letter, the government legal service told Warner the solicitor general was discussing with the CPS whether to charge her with attempting to pervert the course of justice, and that he considered her action “amounted to contempt of court at common law, on the grounds that it was a direct interference with the administration of justice”.

“Jurors are entitled to go to and from court without being confronted or told by members of the public how they should be discharging their duties,” the letter said. “By presenting your placard to them, you interfered with that right and your conduct represented a serious interference with the administration of justice.”