Roger Hallam

Just Stop Oil supporters receive huge sentences for participating in a Zoom call

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UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention Michel Forst attended the trial of five Just Stop Oil supporters at Southwark Crown Court. He attended as an observer because of his serious concerns.

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.” 

Continue ReadingJust Stop Oil supporters receive huge sentences for participating in a Zoom call

Contempt, gagging and UN intervention: inside the UK’s wildest climate trial

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UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention Michel Forst attended the trial of five Just Stop Oil supporters at Southwark Crown Court. He attended as an observer because of his serious concerns.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/12/contempt-gagging-un-intervention-uk-wildest-climate-trial-just-stop-oil

Prosecution of five Just Stop Oil activists over M25 protest led to chaotic scenes in court and concerns about ‘judicial persecution’

As part of his role as UN rapporteur for environmental defenders, Michel Forst has been watching proceedings against climate activists at courts across Europe.

But he may not have seen anything like what unfolded at Southwark crown court in London over the past two and a half weeks, where five Just Stop Oil activists were convicted for conspiring to cause gridlock on the M25 in November 2022.

On the days Forst visited, he witnessed three of the five defendants being arrested in court and dragged to the cells, protesters outside attempting to warn jurors they were not hearing the full case and a judge desperately trying to maintain control over his courtroom.

The judge, Christopher Hehir, had ruled that information about climate breakdown could not be entered into evidence, and could only be referred to by defendants briefly as the “political and philosophical beliefs” that motivated them – which he would tell the jury were in any case irrelevant to their deliberations.

But the defendants had other plans. They sought to turn Hehir’s court into a “site of civil resistance”, causing as much disruption as necessary to ensure that if the jury could not see their evidence on climate breakdown, then the jurors could at least be in no doubt it was being kept from them.

By the time the jury retired to consider a verdict, police had been called into court no fewer than seven times, four of the five defendants had been remanded to prison and 11 others were facing contempt of court proceedings for protests outside the courtroom.

…

By the end of the trial, Whittaker De Abreu, the only one who had not represented herself, was the only defendant left in court.

As a punishment for their “persistent disruption”, Hehir slashed the time given to each defendant from one hour to 20 minutes. He further prohibited any mention of the climate crisis, the legal defences he had disallowed or the principle of jury equity – the idea that jurors can acquit based on their conscience.

As Hallam, Shaw, Lancaster and Gethin gave their speeches from behind the reinforced glass screen of the dock, they each proceeded to flout Hehir’s prohibitions, arguing they had been denied a right to a fair trial.

Hallam told jurors: “It’s blindingly obvious to us here first that you have not been given all the evidence you need. You cannot be sure of our guilt if you are not sure that you have not been given the evidence … we have received no good reason why we are not allowed to tell you what is blindingly obvious, namely what I’m not allowed to speak about. If you are not allowed to hear the blindingly obvious then it’s not a fair trial is it?”

It took just a day’s deliberations for the jury to unanimously find them guilty.

Given the recent history of UK climate protest trials, in which defendants have been sentenced to jail for merely mentioning the words “climate change”, and notwithstanding the dramatic arrests in court, Forst said he was surprised the judge gave them an opportunity to mention climate breakdown at all.

“But the little latitude they had to mention climate change was in the meantime emptied of its very meaning by the fact that, overall, the jury was told to ignore most of it,” he added.

…

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/12/contempt-gagging-un-intervention-uk-wildest-climate-trial-just-stop-oil

Continue ReadingContempt, gagging and UN intervention: inside the UK’s wildest climate trial

Just Stop Oil activists found guilty over M25 disruption plans

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UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention Michel Forst attended the trial of five Just Stop Oil supporters at Southwark Crown Court. He attended as an observer because of his serious concerns.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/just-stop-oil-activists-found-guilty-over-m25-disruption-plans Many articles from the Morning Star today

JUST STOP OIL (JSO) supporters convicted of causing public nuisance by planning to disrupt the M25 to demand an end to new oil and gas licencing have been found guilty.

JSO co-founder Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, Louise Lancaster and Cressida Gethin have been remanded until their sentencing hearing next Thursday and face lengthy prison sentences, despite the United Nations’ condemnation of the trial.

The jury entered guilty verdicts against all defendants yesterday, ruling that the climate crisis was “irrelevant” to the trial.

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/just-stop-oil-activists-found-guilty-over-m25-disruption-plans Many articles from the Morning Star today

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Jury out in historic Just Stop Oil conspiracy case

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UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention Michel Forst attended the trial of five Just Stop Oil supporters at Southwark Crown Court. He attended as an observer because of his serious concerns.

The jury is now deliberating the verdict in a case involving Just Stop Oil supporters Daniel Shaw, Cressie Gethin, Lucia De-Abreu-Whittaker, Louise Lancaster, and Roger Hallam. The five are currently on trial at Southwark Crown Court. They are charged with conspiracy to cause a public nuisance in connection with the M25 gantry actions in November 2022.

They were first arrested in 2022 either pre-emptively in police raids at their homes after attending a Zoom call (in which a Sun journalist was present), or travelling near the M25. The Sun alleged it had ‘infiltrated’ the meeting, tipping off the police and enabling National Highways to secure a public injunction. Some of the five defendants were imprisoned for up to 113 days without trial. They were released subject to stringent conditions including a 10pm to 7am house curfew, stipulations not to be within a one-mile radius of the M25, no contact with other defendants, and not to participate in any climate change demonstration. 

The trial began on 24th June, presided over by Crown Court Judge Hehir. 

At the start of the trial, the office of the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders released a statement expressing its views on the criminal prosecution of Daniel Shaw. Due to his “grave concerns” about the criminalisation of UK environmental defenders, Special Rapporteur Michel Forst attended the trial in person on 4th and 5th July. [1]

During the trial so far, Judge Hehir has ordered nine separate arrests from the courtroom: three times each for Roger Hallam and Daniel Shaw, twice for Louise Lancaster, and once for Cressie Gethin. Additionally, the defendants have collectively spent seven nights in remand since the trial began, with Daniel, Roger, and Louise each spending two nights, and Cressie spending one night. 

On the 4th of July, the prosecution made a historic concession by admitting to the following, in the list of agreed facts to be presented for the jury’s consideration:

“1. On 17 December 2020, Her Majesty’s Treasury published the New Zero Interim Report which states, ‘Climate change is an existential threat to humanity. Without global action to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the climate will change catastrophically with almost unimaginable consequences for societies across the world.’ In recognition of the risks, the UK became, in 2019, the first major economy to implement a legally binding net zero target.

2. Scientific consensus is that beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels risks catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity, which will be irreversible.

3. Over the past five years, the global average temperature rise since pre-industrial times has averaged just under 1.3 degrees Celsius. For the 12 months to June 2024, it averaged 1.63 degrees Celsius and is estimated to top 1.5 degrees Celsius permanently before 2030.

4. In October 2022, the UK Government opened the 33rd licensing round to allow oil and gas companies to explore for more fossil fuels in the North Sea.”

Despite the presence of these agreed facts and the explicit provision for the defence of ‘reasonable excuse’ under section 78 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, Judge Hehir ruled that the defendants would not be allowed any defence under law, repeating at various points in the trial as well as in his written directions to the jury that any facts pertaining to “man-made climate change” were “entirely irrelevant” to the defendants’ charges. 

Continue ReadingJury out in historic Just Stop Oil conspiracy case