Thank the lord.. something positive this week
BBC
Six climate change activists, including the co-founder of Just Stop Oil (JSO), have had their sentences reduced after organising what they hoped would be a massive blockade of the M25, the Court of Appeal has ruled.
Roger Hallam and 15 other protesters were jailed last year for their roles in four demonstrations held by JSO, including climbing on gantries over the M25 and throwing soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting, between August and November 2022.
They challenged their sentences at the Court of Appeal, with their lawyers claiming they were “manifestly excessive”.
The judges dismissed appeals by two women who threw the soup in the National Gallery in London in October 2022.
In their judgment, the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, Mr Justice Lavender and Mr Justice Griffiths ruled that six of the 16 should have their sentences reduced while dismissing the other appeals.
The Court of Appeal said that the judge who sentenced Hallam and others convicted of conspiracy had not taken into account their conscientious motivation when he had assessed their “culpability” – a formal part of the sentencing calculation.
“Some attention must be paid to conscientious motivation, although much less than would have been the case had the offending been less disproportionate,” said Baroness Sue Carr, the Lady Chief Justice.
During the hearing on Friday, several campaigners stood up and turned their backs on the judges while wearing white T-shirts with the words “Corruption in Court”.
PA MediaHallam was originally jailed for five years for agreeing to disrupt traffic by having protesters climb onto gantries over the M25. His sentence was reduced to four years.
The M25 demonstrations took place over four successive days, from 7 to 10 November 2022, with impacted locations including, junction two in Dartford, junction six to seven in Godstone, junction eight to nine in Reigate, junction 13-14 in Staines, junction 21a-22 in Watford, junction 25 in Cheshunt and junction 27 in Epping.
Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, and Cressida Gethin originally received four-year jail terms for their involvement in the same protest.
Shaw’s and Lancaster’s sentences were reduced to three years, while Whittaker De Abreu’s and Gethin’s sentences were reduced to 30 months.
Gaie Delap, who climbed an M25 gantry at the age of 75, was previously jailed for 20 months.
She was told her sentence would be reduced to 18 months because the judge had not taken into account the onerous bail conditions she had faced while awaiting trial.
Last year, she was briefly returned to jail, having been released on licence, because the authorities could not find a monitoring tag small enough to fit her.
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