Greenpeace Kingsnorth activists not guilty

[juliet]

The 6 Greenpeace activists under trial for occupying Kingsnorth's smoke stack are cleared under a 'lawful excuse' defence.

This is *fantastic* - it means that the jury believe that the activists were acting legitimately to protect property, which is an excuse for criminal damage. (The classic example is that you have a lawful excuse to break your neighbour's door down if their house is on fire, in order to prevent further damage occurring.) It's worth noting that, as I understand it, this doesn't necessarily mean that the *jury* think that the action was necessary to protect property; the important legal point is that the defendants genuinely believed it to be the case[0].

Anyway: very, very good news for the no-new-Kingsnorth movement, & indeed for climate activism in general.

[0] There might be a "reasonable person" bit in there somewhere as well. IANAL etc etc.

Comments

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Hooray! This sounds similar to the defence used by Irish activists to bash* up some fighter planes in Shannon airport. Except I think they had to convince that they believed they were saving lives.

*The amount of damage was apparently quite minimal but you don't have to do much for it to be both worth thousands of dollars and enough to convince the pilots not to get up in it.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

*backflips of joy*