18.05.2007 23:36
all that aside!
yes indeed at the original trial the cps turned up and said they were dropping the charge of 'organising'. this scuppered a lot of milan and maya's plans for the day as they'd lined up several witnesses who were all co-organisers to make statements to the court - probably not a huge help to their case but a promising bit of court theatre.
anyway, as reported at the time, the case floundered from the start because the judge decided that milan and maya were in contempt because they refused to give their dates of birth. they were hauled off to the cells and a contempt hearing was arranged for a few days later. at that, no-one could come up with a statute that showed the date of birth was required by law, and so the contempt was thrown out - a useful fact to remember when asked for your d.o.b.! milan has indeed previously been arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned (relating to his grafittoing the ministry of defence building) without ever giving his birthdate.
anyway, with the contempt cleared up, they were scheduled in court today for a short case management hearing to set a date for the trial. the cps this time laid both charges, and because no notes had been kept from before, and it was a different cps barrister with no record of the dropped charge, milan and maya were given the choice to return on monday and see if the original cps barrister could throw light on the matter. but they decided to ask for the trial to go ahead anyway. since the original date, other organisers have been charged, so there would be opportunities for witnesses to come to the court for them.
since they were now offering no witnesses and only statements in their defence, the case was heard today after all (as another day-long case had been adjourned and there was some free court time).
an hour later, judge tubbs reached her verdict. she was very scathing of the cps and was not impressed by their bringing two different charges for what was effectively a single event. so she dispensed with the 'participating' offence with no fine and no costs, and charged £100 fines and no costs for the 'organising' offences, even though both defendants had previous convictions.
this is all quite bizarre, as back in the early days of socpa, maya received a larger fine for merely participating, and milan had received several hundred pounds in fines and costs for 'organising'.
both have agreed there is not a lot of point in appealing as their previous cases are slowly making their ways up to the european courts, and any result there will allow a further challenge to this verdict once resolved.
about the maximum prison terms, i had the (probably unfounded) belief that when socpa first came in, the max was 3 months, but that at a certain date (april 2006?) it would increase to 51 weeks. i'm not certain where i got that from. so, i for one would appreciate if the two legals bods could avoid point-scoring and sniping and explain to us non-legal mortals what the present situation is. ta.
rikki
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