Five Just Stop Oil supporters were handed multi-year prison sentences today for nothing more than participating in a Zoom call. Many UK news reports are claiming that they were jailed for blocking the M25 which is untrue. They were jailed for conspiring to block the M25 by participating in a Zoom meeting.
At Southwark Crown Court, Judge Christopher Hehir jailed Roger Hallam (57, from Wales) for five years, whilst Daniel Shaw (38, from Northampton), Lucia Whittaker De Abreu (34, from Derby), Louise Lancaster (58, from Cambridge) and Cressida Gethin (22, from Hereford) were each sentenced to four years.
They were convicted last week of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance in relation to the M25 motorway disruption in November 2022.
At last week’s trial, Judge Hehir ruled that climate issues were ‘irrelevant and inadmissible’, dismissing them as mere ‘political opinion and belief’. Although the legislation includes a defence of ‘reasonable excuse’ and despite the prosecution acknowledging the imminent catastrophic and irreversible harm from burning fossil fuels, the judge prevented the jury from considering whether the defendants had a reasonable excuse and directed them to ignore any evidence about the climate crisis.
When the defendants insisted on honouring their oaths to tell the jury the whole truth about their actions and refused to leave the witness box until they had done so, the judge repeatedly had them arrested and jailed throughout the trial.
The judge also refused the defence request to call Professor Bill McGuire as a witness, one of the world’s leading experts on climate impacts.
Today Professor McGuire, Emeritus Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College London, said:
“The trial and verdict were a farce. They mark a low point in British justice and they were an assault on free speech. The judge’s characterisation of climate breakdown as a matter of opinion and belief is completely nonsensical and demonstrates extraordinary ignorance. Similarly to suggest that the climate emergency is irrelevant in relation to whether the defendants had a reasonable case for action is crass stupidity.”