Activists have protested outside crown courts in England against the contempt of court action being taken against a woman for holding up a placard on the rights of jurors.
In response to the decision by the solicitor general, a government law officer, to pursue Trudi Warner, 68, for contempt of court, scores of people gathered outside crown courts on Monday holding placards that pronounced on the rights of juries to acquit a defendant according to their consciences.
Abi Perrin, a scientist involved in the protest said: “In 2023 telling the truth is being treated as a criminal act, with people prosecuted for displaying facts in public, and imprisoned for explaining their motivations in their own defence in a court of law.
“I am deeply afraid of a world where truth, science and morality are not important, or where we are not free to fight for them.”
In Bristol three generations of one family held placards outside the crown court.
Vivi MacDonald, 19, who was with her mother and grandmother, said: “The continuous measures by the government to limit protest are threatening everyone’s freedom and ability to take action or express their opinion based on our own conscience in the light of the urgent need for social, political and environmental change.”
No date has been set for Warner’s hearing. The retired social worker held up a sign outside Inner London crown court earlier this year spelling out the right of a jury to acquit a defendant according to their consciences.
Her sign referred to a plaque in the Old Bailey celebrating the independence of jurors in the Bushel case in 1670, where a jury repeatedly refused a judge’s direction to find defendants guilty, despite being locked up and denied food and water.
Warner had been protesting outside a trial of Insulate Britain protesters after the judge placed restrictions on defendants in a series of trials that prevented them from mentioning the climate crisis, insulation, fuel poverty or their motivations in their defence.
At the Old Bailey in London on Monday several people holding placards gathered outside court in support of Warner. Similar actions took place in Manchester and Bristol.
The plaque inside the Old Bailey outlines how, in the 1670 trial of two Quakers for unlawful assembly for holding a religious meeting, the jury rebelled. Led by Edward Bushel, they refused the judge’s direction to find the pair guilty of unlawful assembly. The jury was locked up and deprived of food and water by the judge but held firm and refused to convict the pair.
Bushel then took a case of habeas corpus that led to a ruling by Sir John Vaughan, the chief justice of the court of common pleas, that a jury could not be punished simply on account of the verdict it returned.
While Warner faces a possible jail sentence, a separate police investigation is taking place into allegations of attempting to pervert the course of justice relating to at least 12 people who also stood outside Inner London crown court in May holding similar placards.
The 12 have received letters from the Metropolitan police’s specialist public order unit saying: “You have recently been identified as taking part in an incident outside the Inner London crown court … whereby you were seated outside of the court and held a placard with the words; ‘The right of juries – to give their verdict according to their convictions’, in a place where both witnesses and jurors attending trials … could not avoid seeing them.”
The letter went on: “This may amount to an offence under the common law of attempting to pervert the course of justice.”
