«Never again is now» is such a good slogan
Direct link to the text of his full closing speech which is excellent.
The judge interrupted several times in the first few sentences, telling Olax that references to Genocide were inadmissible. Court security were then ordered to remove Olax to the cells, and the judge summed up the case and sent the jury away to deliberate without the defendant present.
Unusually, Olax was not even returned to the court to hear the verdict.
Hmmm yes much legal system, very justice.
“Israel is committing genocide” is not relevant to a charge of criminal damage. English law does not recognise “I was protesting something grievously wrong” as a general defence, and nor should it - so trying to lead the jury to be sympathetic because they agree with your message instead of finding according to the law would indeed be unjust.
Idiot.
This is the value of jury trials, the people get a chance to decide what is just. What’s the point in having a justice system that results in outcomes the vast majority would consider unjust.
Why is the judge able to exclude evidence?
No fucking clue, they shouldnt be
I encourage you to look it up :)
nor should it
Hard disagree there. How to create such a system is a separate question though, that much I will grant.
would indeed be unjust
It wouldn’t be “correct” in the application of the law. That wouldn’t make it unjust necessarily. Law is not the same as justice, it’s just our best effort.
Law in capitalist countries is not an effort towards justice, it is an effort towards protecting private property and the rights of capitalists.
The law, incidentally, is also what makes it illegal for said capitalists to kill you for example. Why do you think they always want their industries deregulated, E.g when it comes to safety regulations.
Doesn’t get much better under communism either since party elites are allowed to do anything they want and enrich themselves in the process.
The law, incidentally, is also what makes it illegal for said capitalists to kill you for example
This only limits certain actions, not killing in general. There are ways that capitalists legally kill people all the time, like by enforcing car-centric infrastructure or with climate change or by refusing necessary healthcare in privatized healthcare systems or by evicting tenants.
Yes, but under libertarianism that would all be legal. So I’m not sure life without laws would be all that much better than life with laws. Would give even more power to the elites.
Surely you have examples of a successful transition from socialism to communism and then it’s failure, then?
Are you stalking me now?
No, I have no examples of a successful transition from to communism because it can’t really happen at scale with humans in charge. The “vanguard” will never relinquish control. Why would they? Someone else would take the role anyway.
Maybe one day we’ll have real AGI to handle it.
So you’ve got no examples of what happens under capitalism happening under communism, yet seem very sure about it being an inevitable outcome.
Oh God you’re an AI enthusiast?
But it is our best effort. I don’t think even an abstract concept of justice is served by taking into account political motivation for your actions unless you apply the principle blindly. Do you think someone spraying right-wing slogans like “deport all migrants” or “traitors” or just “fuck you” on RNLI buildings should be off the hook because they think there’s an existential threat to the country from a trickle of refugees? Do you think they should be allowed to bring up those beliefs in court?
Besides assigning consequences to bad actions, justice must in the first instance be fair. I see no fair way to privilege motivations that I sympathise with (anti-Israeli-genocide) but not ones that I find detestable (anti-immigrant).
If this is y’alls best effort y’all kinda suck at this ngl
Wow, incisive argument.
Why even have a jury?
To determine facts. For them to be able to do that, they need to not be subjected to irrelevant emotional arguments.
Throughout these comments I’ve been asking what people think if the slogan had instead been “deport all immigrants” - do you have a view on whether a jury should hear a defendant’s motivation for spraying something like that?
That’s a little bit misleading, they’re supposed to determine the facts based on the evidence, then provide a verdict.
When giving a verdict they can take into account the severity of the penalty and the circumstances of the crime.
I think a jury should hear the motivation for the defendant’s actions: as a counterexample consider a defendant on trial for breaking their parole (under freedom of movement), but who did so to rescue people from a burning building. A jury would have to hear the motivation to take this into account.
But there are limits for good reason: if they broke parole in order to volunteer at a food bank or give blood, these are not valid motivations in the eyes of the law. Emergencies are, by common agreement, different than most other circumstances.
That determination can be made by the judge so that the jury doesn’t hear emotional arguments about how important the work at the food bank is and potentially be swayed. It’s the same as the judge deciding what evidence is admissible - we don’t show the jury absolutely everything because some is likely to lead them to return a verdict we know, through experience and careful consideration, to be incorrect.
The impartiality of juries only extends to what happens within the courtroom, they must not be swayed by anything that happens outside it. Everything else is fair game, including testimony.
Juries have the absolute right to acquit a defendant according to their conscience, which has been a principal of law for over 300 years. Your experience and consideration doesn’t get to decide for the jury what their decision must be.
I don’t think you’re really engaging with this… do you think there should be no limits on what evidence and testimony is admitted, just because it’s inside the court? Why even have the judge in there?
Disagree. Juries are there to determine justice, not facts, as much as our legal system would like you to believe otherwise.
Why would you need a jury to determine facts?
I don’t have the inclination to quote standard legal theory at you, it’s not like I’m on crackpot territory here
It’s a valid question. If this were about fact finding, a judge should be more capable than random people.
You, too, are welcome to go and read a Wikipedia article or textbook about why we have juries. I replied originally because the article was bad and because people don’t seem to consider why you might keep stuff from a jury. Having done that, if people still disagree, they are welcome to criticise the English legal system and its ordinary justifications without getting me to copy and paste them.
There is a reason most developed countries do not make use of random people to determine a verdict.
Go read a book. Or Wikipedia.
Yes they should.
Ok. I don’t, that sounds like it would lead to a lot of bad outcomes as well as giving an opportunity for terrible people to grandstand and waste time.
More of a strict letter of the law than a spirit of the law kinda guy, eh?
There’s nothing in the spirit of the law that is supposed to allow people to air their grievances in court, so no. What I’m against is adding that to the spirit of the law.
And the reason is because I think there’s no fair way to do it that doesn’t open the way for awful people to abuse it. And what I definitely am for is fairness.
Ah ok, so it’s easy - just allow all good things in the courtroom but ban the bad ones. I wish I’d thought of that. I must be a fucking moron I guess.
It seemed pretty easy for the jury.
What do you think when a jury makes a decision you disagree with?
Actually, you don’t want an honest discussion so that’s a question for you to ask yourself; I won’t be reading your reply.
University of Birmingham disagrees: https://academic.oup.com/ojls/article/45/2/329/8078322?login=false they say that it should be a legal defence.
They’re welcome to say that. I’ll stick with my own beliefs and those of the judge in this case though, after a brief read of some of that long paper. You’re welcome to make the case, though.
I’m sorry. You’re beliefs don’t matter. Only facts.
Like the fact that the article linked does not represent the law in the UK at the moment?
The judge, Mr Recorder M Chawla KC, withdrew any lawful defences from Olax Outis, who, continuing their protest, refused to stand for the judge throughout the trial, instead only standing out of respect for the jury whenever they were brought in or out of the court.
So fucking based.
Its a short article, but it actually feels good to read. The judge tried to fuck him over and the guy represented himself, but the jurors saw through the bullshit.
Every now and then the good guys win one.
Love that while the UK leadership may be a lot of racists and bigots, the people luckily aren’t pieces of shit. Hopefully they can vote in better representation to reflect that in coming elections.
I think he represented his position well.
Wow, love seeing good news sometimes
Based
This garbage article doesn’t mention what he was charged with. After a search, turns out he was charged with criminal damage, and his main defence seems to be that he used washable paint so didn’t damage anything. Nonetheless the prosecution claim it cost £7000 to clean off.
I think people unquestioningly celebrating his acquittal need to think more carefully about it. If he’d just sprayed a shitty tag on a major statue or public building, presumably you’d all think that was wrong and would deserve some punishment, even if small. Even if the paint were washable, if it cost a lot to clean. But if it’s the content of the message that determines legality, as judged subjectively by a jury, we’re going to have some dark acquittals in the future. The fact that a jury happens to agree with the message is not a good way of judging guilt and innocence. The principle of rule of law is that the law takes a certain amount of blindness to things, to prevent it being abused.
The article does point out that the victim had been imprisoned for 6 months at that point. That’s already disproportionate punishment for writing a slogan with washable paint on the likeness of some genocidal cunt. Would he have been put through that if he’s written some other message? I doubt it.
Do you think that if a government made a law criminalizing having brown skin that a jury has a moral imperative to find brown people guilty?
I think the point of a jury is to apply justice to the legal system, and in fact their moral imperative is to acquit people who face unjust applications of the law or are victims of government oppression.
Yes that is what protest law is. You are not understanding free speech and the right to protest lol.
What is “protest law” in the UK? Where on the world does free speech allow spraying slogans on public buildings?
He actually covers it in the closing arguments (the definition of protest law). I am not familiar with UK law, but it shouldn’t be hard to double check
Tip: protest law does not make many generally illegal things legal if you were protesting. It was a rhetorical question because the person above was implying it would do something it doesn’t.
free speech and right to protest aren’t the same in the UK as in the US.
Free speech does not protect damaging property anyway.
I agree with the guy’s message, but all of y’all are having a hard time understanding how the legal system is supposed to work.
Justice is supposed to be blind and proceed according to the law.
If you don’t like the law, that’s where, you, as a citizen, and through your legislature, amend/create those laws.
That is why it is important to watchdog your legislators. They are the ones that are allowing this shit to happen in the first place.
Am I glad he was aquiited, absolutely. But the judge wasn’t wrong either.
Man, I love that fucking line, “Never again is now”.
I’m not sure you understand what the law is… The law is not a book of rules, it does not exist independently from its creators, it is the will of the people. If the people find someone not guilty, they’re not guilty. The law was invented by people and only exists to be an extension of the will of the people.
If ten people from a representative section of the population thinks someone is guilty or not guilty, that is the law. It doesn’t matter whether they did something or not, what they are deciding is whether they should be punished for it or not. That’s why there is a jury in the first place, otherwise you’d have a system based on accuracy, not on argument.
I understand that what you’re talking about could be understood to be “the law” but it’s not what I’m talking about when I use the word, and I don’t think it’s what most people understand by the word.
But OK, when you say “the law” you mean “what people get convicted for.” I’m saying this person probably should have been convicted, but you haven’t even said whether you agree, because picking a different definition for a word doesn’t help decide what should or should not happen.
The law is the will of the people so if they weren’t convicted they shouldn’t be. The law does not exist independently of humans, because it is an imaginary concept we made up.
So the law is just an excuse for us to punish the people we want to punish and not punish the people we don’t want to. All abstract concepts disappear when there are no more humans, so they are not things onto themselves.
Miscarriage of justice is impossible
Seems to be what you’re saying
Yes, because our system isn’t designed for justice. The police doesn’t try to find the truth, they just try to find someone to charge. The defender doesn’t try to find the truth, but to escape conviction for his client, likewise with the prosecutor. The judge is there to follow the letter of the law as well as possible, there is nobody that cares about justice.
The very idea that you need a prosecutor and a defender makes no sense if you think about it. At sociey that wanted justice would just have a bunch of independant experts colaborate to find the truth and sentence based on that.
The idea that the process of justice must be carried out like a competition in which both sides are trying to trip each other up and trying to win at any cost through manipulation and omission with no regards to truth or justice means that the system has no interest in either.
Edgy. There are standard arguments for why an adversarial legal system tends to achieve good outcomes. I’m not really interested in digging up standard arguments though so I guess we’ll leave it here.
I suppose jury could say it’s an improvement, not a damage. Or that 7k is ridiculous and hence throw out the case.
Oh, you still have jury trials? Must have been expected to receive less than 3 years in prison because they cancelled jury trials for all of them. Aren’t you glad you voted for labour?
No, they havent “cancelled” them. There is legislation going through which would restrict trial by jury for those offences, but it hasnt even reached the lords yet. That is likely to be where it is picked apart.
They already did it for a year or less in prison in 2020 and that is passed no?
You guys don’t seem very fucking worried about it.
The maximum a magistrate could sentence for a single either-way offense changed from 6 months to 12 months then, someone accused of an either way offense could still elect to have their case in front of a jury at crown court (with the possibility of >12 month sentence). I wouldn’t consider that a particularly significant change, and it didn’t attract a large amount of criticism from the legal profession like the current proposed change has.
