The usual suspects – step forward Corbynite MP John McDonnell – are praising the Palestine Action acquittal. But Amnesty UK?
It does nothing of the sort. These activists weren’t on trial for being members of a proscribed organisation: they were on trial for breaking and entering, criminal damage, and grievous bodily harm. On all of which counts they were demonstrably guilty.
The Palestine Action trial does not raise questions about counter-terror laws. It raises a far more serious question. How do we protect British democracy from being subverted by activist/prejudiced juries?
Let’s not pretend about what happened here.
The defendants were not acquitted because what they did was legal. Burglary. Damage to private property. Grievous bodily harm. These are bog-standard offences. Nothing exotic. Nothing ambiguous. Given the evidence, in any politically neutral case, these people would have been found guilty and sent to prison.
But this case was not politically neutral.
The entire defence strategy rested on one gambit. Compel the jury to acquit despite the fact that every defendant admitted to the acts they were charged with. The argument was simple. Their intent mattered. They believed, wholeheartedly, that smashing property and injuring a police officer was somehow saving lives in Gaza.
That is not a legal defence. That is an appeal to sympathy.
And it worked.
Twelve random strangers who shared the political beliefs of the defendants decided those beliefs were enough to override the law. That is what happened. That is what we should be alarmed about.
The concern here is not sentencing guidelines or prosecutorial overreach. The concern is the source of our laws – the British Parliament – being subverted by activism at the level of the jury box.
If political sympathy can nullify clear-cut criminal liability, then we do not have a legal system. We have a popularity contest dressed in robes.
I doubt that all twelve jurors were sympathetic. Given that they were deliberating for over 36 hours, I get the sense that there were a few there who were absolutely refusing to endorse a guilty charge because of their personal sympathy for the Palestinian cause, and others who saw clearly that their duty was to put aside ideologies and concentrate on the evidence. And they couldn’t agree.
It’d be interesting if we got one of those anonymous juror revelations about what really went on.
Mick Hartley 
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