United Kingdom

6747 readers

467 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

tom@feddit.uk

GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk

frankPodmore@slrpnk.net

Jury refuses to convict four Palestine activists accused of arms firm raid (www.declassifieduk.org)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml to c/unitedkingdom@feddit.uk

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

After more than 17 hours of deliberation, a jury at Birmingham crown court has failed to reach a verdict over whether four pro-Palestine activists committed criminal damage at an arms factory.

Iain Evans, Hana-Yun Stevens, Frank Sherman, and Hisham Alkhamezi were each accused of criminal damage at a factory owned by Moog, a US aerospace firm, in Wolverhampton.

During the trial, the jury saw footage from helicopters and CCTV cameras which showed the defendants crashing through the site’s front gate and damaging solar panels on its roof.

Prosecution lawyers presented this as an open and shut case given the defendants admitted in court to occupying the roof in order to shut down the factory’s production line. They said the trial “is not about Israel, it’s not about Palestine… It’s simply about whether they unlawfully damaged property”.

But the jury was also shown a social media post demonstrating that the activists’ goal was to disrupt the supply of UK-made fighter jet components to Israel.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] DornerStan@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think it's an unavoidable possibility in any place that allows juries to vote, right? Like the court can try and crack down on it in any number of ways (and in the US they do). But at the end of the day if a juror wants to vote a certain way and isn't required to provide reasoning, they can simply vote to acquit.

I dunno I'm not a lawyer

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In my jurisdiction, not telling the court you are aware of jury nullification during jury selection is illegal. Kind of hard to prove if one refuses to convict and keeps it to themselves, though.

[–] DornerStan@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yeah like they can definitely ban it de jure and furiously try to clamp down on it from various angles. But de facto it's kind of a built-in loophole of jury systems.