The toppling of the statue to slave trader Edward Colston was a violent act of criminal damage which is not protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, senior judges have ruled.
The statue in Bristol was felled during a Black Lives Matter protest in June 2020, leading to the prosecution of four people involved.
The group, known as the Colston Four, were all acquitted of criminal damage by a jury, but faced a Court of Appeal hearing after a referral by then-Attorney General Suella Braverman.
In a ruling on Wednesday, appeal judges found that a preliminary argument ventured by the prosecution at trial – that toppling the statue was “not peaceful” and not protected by the ECHR.
“The court has concluded that the prosecution was correct in its submission that the conduct fell outside the protection of the Convention”, said the judges, in a summary of their ruling. “Specifically, the circumstances in which the statue was damaged did not involve peaceful protest. The toppling of the statute was violent.
“Moreover, the damage to the statue was significant. The proportionality of the conviction could not arise.
“Debate about the fate of the statue had to be resolved through appropriate legal channels, irrespective of a view that those channels were thought to have been slow or inefficient, and not by what might be described as a form of self-help.”
The bronze memorial to the 17th-century slave merchant was pulled down during on June 7 2020, before being rolled into the water.
All four defendants admitted involvement in the incident, but denied their actions were criminal, claiming the statue itself had been a hate crime against the people of Bristol.
Defence lawyer Raj Chada, a partner at Hodge Jones & Allen, said: “We are disappointed by the Court of Appeal judgment.
“In our view, the evidence at the trial was that the toppling was not done violently. The clear view from an expert valuer, which we were prevented from relying upon during the trial, was that the value of the statue had increased exponentially after the toppling.
“The statue is still on public display as a monument to the evils of the slave trade, not as an obscene glorification of a slave trader. It is a shame that this is the Attorney General’s focus rather than the multiple crises facing this country.”
The Attorney General’s reference and today’s decision does not affected the not guilty verdicts at trial, but clarifies an area of the law in the acquittal of one defendant, Rhian Graham.
The ruling will be pored over by legal experts, particularly those involving in cases of criminal damage during protest.
Hundreds of eco-protesters have faced criminal charges after blockading roads and gluing themselves to public buildings, works of art, and each other.
The Court of Appeal added in its judgment that in allegations of criminal dmage where there is only “minor or trivial damage”, it is possible a criminal prosecution “may not be a proportionate response in the context of protest”.
“We cannot conceive that the Convention could be used to protect from prosecution and conviction those who damage private property to any degree than is other than trivial”, said the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett of Maldon, Mr Justice Holgate and Mr Justice Saini.
“It is essential that prosecutorial discretion on whether to proceed to trial be exercised carefully, applying the Code for Crown Prosecutors in the context of the principles governing articles 9, 10 and 11 (of the ECHR) with a clear eye on the proportionality of prosecution and conviction.”
