When juries deliver verdicts that offend the political establishment, they are commonly termed ‘perverse’ – and Boris Johnson’s government has been experiencing a veritable plague of perversity in recent months. The court victory earlier this month for the activists who dumped a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol Harbour is the best-known example but when you add up the number of acquittals in recent climate-action trials you get a much broader picture of something afoot.
It looks very much as if juries are simply not buying the official line that any disruptions must be seen as illegal, plain and simple. Instead, many people are buying into the idea that activists have it right and that they are breaking the law to prevent a far greater crime.
Notable examples of ‘perverse juries’ include the 1985 acquittal of Clive Ponting, the civil servant charged with leaking details of the sinking of the Argentine cruiser Belgrano during the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas war, and the 1991 acquittal of two life-long peace campaigners, Michael Randle and Pat Pottle. Both men were acquitted at the Old Bailey for freeing the spy, George Blake, from Wormwood Scrubs prison 35 years earlier.
