A climate activist jailed for 15 months after a protest on the Sydney Harbour Bridge has been released from prison after a judge approved her bail appeal, as more than 100 protestors gathered outside court in support.
District court judge Timothy Gartelmann on Tuesday granted bail to 32-year-old Deanna “Violet” Coco, who in December was handed a 15-month jail sentence with a non-parole period of eight months.
Coco was the first person to be jailed under controversial New South Wales laws passed earlier this year that introduced a possible two-year prison sentence or $22,000 fine for people who block major roads, bridges or ports.
She was denied bail earlier in December before magistrate Allison Hawkins, until an appeal of her sentence due to be heard in March.
Appearing via audio-visual link from Silverwater Prison wearing a green skivvy, Coco thanked Gartlemann as her overturned that decision, allowing her to walk free until the appeal.
“I am not satisfied the applicant would represent an unacceptable risk of endangering the community,” Gartlemann said on Tuesday.
Coco was jailed after she blocked a lane of traffic on Sydney’s Harbour Bridge during a protest in April, one of a string of climate demonstrations which caused gridlock in Sydney’s CBD earlier this year.
She parked a truck and stood holding a lit flare on the bridge during the protest, along with three others arrested at the same time.
She had pleaded guilty to seven charges including using or modifying an authorised explosive not as prescribed and resisting a police offer during arrest. She was also fined $2,500.
Gartlemann noted that one of Coco’s co-offenders, Jay Larbalestier, had not received a jail sentence, and noted a “sentence other than full-time imprisonment may be within range” when the appeal is heard next year.
Outside the court following the decision Coco’s lawyer, Eddie Lloyd, said the laws were “the most anti-democratic, cruel laws that curtail our freedom of speech, to express how we feel about what’s going on in the world today”.
“I’m from Lismore and I thank Violet for being so brave, and trying to raise the alarm about the climate emergency that we are in,” she said.
“People like Violet are climate warriors who are brave enough to stand up and try to raise the alarm. Thankfully there’s some justice in this place and we’ve seen that today.”
While Gartlemann said it was not for him to decide whether the appeal might succeed her offences were “well within range for consideration” of a sentence served in the community rather than in prison.
“It is far from inevitable that the sentence of full-time imprisonment will be imposed in the hearing of the appeal,” he said.
The department of public prosecutions had opposed the bail application, with DPP lawyer Nicholas Leach arguing there was a risk Coco would fail to appear at her sentencing appeal.
He also argued her release would present an “endangerment” to the community based on her history of protest from October 2020.
But Gartlemann allowed bail, subject to a series of conditions including that she not go within one kilometre of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and a $10,000 surety.
While he noted she had previous convictions, he said Coco had not previously been imprisoned and had complied with previous bail conditions for seven months.
He said it was not up to him whether to determine whether the jail sentence was “appropriate”, but did not agree with the DPP that she posed an unacceptable risk to the community if she was released on bail.
It came after more than 100 protestors gathered outside Sydney’s Downing Centre court before the appeal on Tuesday, calling for the laws that jailed Coco to be overturned.
Among those in the courtroom as she was granted bail was Mali Poppy Cooper, a climate activist who disrupted peak-hour traffic in central Sydney but avoided conviction after a court was told of the trauma they suffered during the Lismore floods, and NSW Greens MP Sue Higginson, who called her arrest a “moral hysteria”.
“The right to dissent, and the rules of engagement in how we dissent including non-violent peaceful direct action is something very, very important to our system and at the moment our government is putting that at risk,” she said.
