UPDATE: Following my activities in the original document I was facing two court cases. In each instance although I'd been arrested under Section 7 (Interference with use or operation of key national infrastructure) I was charged with Wilful Obstruction of the Highway which is a much lesser offence and does not include the option of going to Crown Court with the associated jury and increased court costs.
For the
second offence I had a plea hearing ("Not Guilty") on Nov 15th as I'd been 'held over' for breaking bail conditions and, along with two co-defendants, was offered a court date of February 6th. But I was due to be on holiday then so we were all given January 10th instead - they kindly allow a change of date so long as the holiday is pre-booked. Bringing that date forward ended up working in our favour as we received no information about the prosecution's case despite chasing it up with the CPS both before and after Christmas. This meant we had no time to prepare a defence satisfactorily. A few days before the trial there was a rumour that it was going to be delayed by a fortnight but that turned out not to be the case. The CPS were woefully unprepared and decided not to proceed with the case due to lack of evidence. ............Woohoo!.............. But I'd spent ages preparing my statement and would have much preferred an acquittal
.
For the
first offence my plea hearing wasn't until December 22nd at 10am. I waited outside the Courtroom with another JSO person and was surprised that the area was so quiet as the time approached. Eventually a court usher came to find us - our case was on a different floor in a different courtroom but no one had thought to inform us. Four of us ended up appearing together but didn't get into court until 11.30am to be given copies of the evidence against us. We were given time to read it all before making our plea but it was difficult to concentrate on it in the noisy environment of the court waiting area, especially when the format is unfamiliar. We didn't get back in until after lunch while the magistrate dealt with other unrelated accused persons coming up from the cells. We went in and all pleaded NG with a fifth one of us, in true "Dice Man" fashion, only deciding his plea on a coin toss! We had a small win here by persuading the magistrate to remove our bail conditions which barred those of us from outside London from entering the area inside the M25. We got out at around 3.30pm. The inefficiency, chaos and understaffing was typical of an underfunded public service.
The defence for most cases is the Ziegler defence and it's all about proportionality and the ECHR Right to Free Speech and to Protest. Despite extensive reading and countless Zoom meetings I'm still a little hazy about how it works but I'm told that in protest cases it can be effective 30-40% of the time.
From all I hear the verdict seems to depend far more on the identity and mood of the Magistrate than the case in front of them. It was interesting that while most JSO supporters choose to self represent unless they qualify for legal aid (which I don't) in each of my cases there has been one co-defendant who has chosen to be professionally represented - even the one who was a criminal defence barrister in a previous life (he says he gets too flustered and emotional while representing himself).
I'll get the chance to make my statement on April 30th.
