4 people arrested for locking on to tractors planting Bayer CropScience GM maize in Dorset (next to the Pink Castle) have their aquital over turned in the high court and now face retrial
CROPS PROTESTER FACING CONVICTION
Western Morning News 11:00 - 05 November 2003
http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=77707&command=displayContent&sourceNode=77259&contentPK=7652779
Two of the UK's top judges have ruled that Totnes GM protester Liz Snook should be found guilty of civil disobedience in a High Court decision.
The High Court overturned a not guilty decision by a district judge over her right to protest again GM maize trials by chaining herself to a tractor. Lord Justice Brooke and Mr Justice Silber yesterday ruled that the lower court was wrong, with a direction that she should be convicted. The court allowed the challenge by the Director of Public Prosecutions to the decision by Dorset magistrates who had cleared Snook and three others of trespass in March. The district judge at Sherborne Magistrates Court cleared 26-year-old Snook and the others of causing a nuisance. The lower court ruled that she had not acted unreasonably.
Lord Justice Brooke, rejected the protesters' defence that they were defending property. "It is clear that the respondents knew quite well that there was nothing unlawful about the drilling of GM maize seed on the land, even if the seed might blow about or be transferred by one means or another to neighbouring land. "
Lord Justice Brooke said the judge who cleared the protesters should have accepted their defence was not allowable.
"The case must therefore be remitted to him with a direction to convict, since no defence of lawful excuse is available to the defendants."
Snook, who has previous protest convictions, claimed at the magistrates court she considered GM crops a "serious threat" to the eco-system and that her protest had been "as a last resort."
However, the Director of Public Prosecutions, argued that there was "no acceptable defence to the charges."
HIGH COURT SAYS GM PROTESTERS ARE GUILTY
Western Morning News
10:27 - 05 November 2003
http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=77707&command=displayContent&sourceNode=77259&contentPK=7663453
Four gm crop protesters, including two from the Westcountry, have been ordered by the High Court to be convicted of criminal offences after shackling themselves to tractors during a demonstration.
In a successful appeal, the Director of Public Prosecutions won orders overturning a district judge's decision to accept the protesters' defence that they were protecting the environment.
In a ruling which will come as a blow to the anti-GM movement, Lord Justice Brooke and Mr Justice Silber ruled: "In our judgment, the district judge ought to have directed himself as a matter of law that the defence of private defence or protective force was not available to the respondents". The four were protesting against an experimental trial involving genetically modified maize on farmland in Dorset. Elizabeth Snook, of Totnes; Olaf Bayer, of Oxford; Richard Whistance, from Catcott, Somerset; and William Hart, from Matlock, Derbyshire, were acquitted of aggravated trespass by Judge Roger House, sitting at Sherborne Magistrates' Court in March this year.
The four were prosecuted for leading a protest against a trial of pesticide resistant GM-maize known as strain T-25 being planted at the Horselynch Plantation at Littlemore, near Weymouth, Dorset, on May 16 last year. As well as building a large wooden pink castle by the site entrance, the four disrupted the start of the trial by strapping and locking themselves to tractors which were preparing to sew the GM seeds. At one point during the magistrates' court hearing, Snook, who had been convicted of similar acts of protest in the past, broke down in tears.
She said: "All I wanted to do was to stop the planting of that field. We did what we did as a last resort."
After two days of evidence, the district judge said the four had acted in a "reasonable" way, adding: "I can see you all have huge knowledge of GM crops and I can see you were acting to protect the land and animals."
But yesterday Lord Justice Brooke and Mr Justice Silber said the district judge had erred in law.
Western Morning News 11:00 - 05 November 2003
http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=77707&command=displayContent&sourceNode=77259&contentPK=7652779 Two of the UK's top judges have ruled that Totnes GM protester Liz Snook should be found guilty of civil disobedience in a High Court decision.
The High Court overturned a not guilty decision by a district judge over her right to protest again GM maize trials by chaining herself to a tractor. Lord Justice Brooke and Mr Justice Silber yesterday ruled that the lower court was wrong, with a direction that she should be convicted. The court allowed the challenge by the Director of Public Prosecutions to the decision by Dorset magistrates who had cleared Snook and three others of trespass in March. The district judge at Sherborne Magistrates Court cleared 26-year-old Snook and the others of causing a nuisance. The lower court ruled that she had not acted unreasonably.
Lord Justice Brooke, rejected the protesters' defence that they were defending property. "It is clear that the respondents knew quite well that there was nothing unlawful about the drilling of GM maize seed on the land, even if the seed might blow about or be transferred by one means or another to neighbouring land. "
Lord Justice Brooke said the judge who cleared the protesters should have accepted their defence was not allowable.
"The case must therefore be remitted to him with a direction to convict, since no defence of lawful excuse is available to the defendants."
Snook, who has previous protest convictions, claimed at the magistrates court she considered GM crops a "serious threat" to the eco-system and that her protest had been "as a last resort."
However, the Director of Public Prosecutions, argued that there was "no acceptable defence to the charges."
HIGH COURT SAYS GM PROTESTERS ARE GUILTY
Western Morning News
10:27 - 05 November 2003
http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=77707&command=displayContent&sourceNode=77259&contentPK=7663453 Four gm crop protesters, including two from the Westcountry, have been ordered by the High Court to be convicted of criminal offences after shackling themselves to tractors during a demonstration.
In a successful appeal, the Director of Public Prosecutions won orders overturning a district judge's decision to accept the protesters' defence that they were protecting the environment.
In a ruling which will come as a blow to the anti-GM movement, Lord Justice Brooke and Mr Justice Silber ruled: "In our judgment, the district judge ought to have directed himself as a matter of law that the defence of private defence or protective force was not available to the respondents". The four were protesting against an experimental trial involving genetically modified maize on farmland in Dorset. Elizabeth Snook, of Totnes; Olaf Bayer, of Oxford; Richard Whistance, from Catcott, Somerset; and William Hart, from Matlock, Derbyshire, were acquitted of aggravated trespass by Judge Roger House, sitting at Sherborne Magistrates' Court in March this year.
The four were prosecuted for leading a protest against a trial of pesticide resistant GM-maize known as strain T-25 being planted at the Horselynch Plantation at Littlemore, near Weymouth, Dorset, on May 16 last year. As well as building a large wooden pink castle by the site entrance, the four disrupted the start of the trial by strapping and locking themselves to tractors which were preparing to sew the GM seeds. At one point during the magistrates' court hearing, Snook, who had been convicted of similar acts of protest in the past, broke down in tears.
She said: "All I wanted to do was to stop the planting of that field. We did what we did as a last resort."
After two days of evidence, the district judge said the four had acted in a "reasonable" way, adding: "I can see you all have huge knowledge of GM crops and I can see you were acting to protect the land and animals."
But yesterday Lord Justice Brooke and Mr Justice Silber said the district judge had erred in law.
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some clarification from one of the defendants
06.11.2003 17:46
As one of the defendents it’s been strange and frustrating to see the media's hype and confusion on the this case. While our initial victory was virtually ignored by the mainstream, the revised verdict has recieved brief but national coverage.
Despite the spinning of this story as major news, reading of the verdict shows that nothing has actually happened. The matter on trial in the high court in London was not our case, or GM, but a district judge's interpretation of the law. This was reflected in the verdict- the common law we used has not been changed. No precedents have been set. We are simply back in the position we were 6 months ago- awaiting sentence for a minor charge. A charge that itself was only created seven years ago by the Conservative government to criminalize legitimate civil disobedience.
The ruling from the high court appears to say that because the trial of GM maize was licensed, it could not have been a criminal threat to others property. This is like claiming that nothing the government does can ever be wrong. Yet time and again Crown court rulings have shown that GM pollution does pose a criminal threat to others property- for both organic and conventional farmers land and crops, and that therefore removing it is both lawful and necessary. I experienced this when charges of half a million pounds worth of criminal damage dropped against me, for removing the same variety of GM maize for this very reason.
After 4 hours of discussion about past case law the high court recommended that we be found guilty. But they haven’t heard two days of complex evidence from both sides on the matter of GM or that specific situation. The district judge in Dorset did, and came to his not guilty verdict immediately.
All this ruling proves is that the law is a blunt instrument, which like all the areas surrounding regulation of GM has simply no provision yet for this unprecedented technology. GM has been foisted upon us so fast that the slow cogs of the system have yet to catch up with it’s implications, which is why direct action is so necessary. In the past five years it has been the one thing that has protected the status of organic farmers and minimized this unpredictable, uncontainable and self-replicating form of pollution. GM crops and the companies that are promoting them are the real criminals.
PS. Indulge my pride here in a point of clarification. I did cry in the dock, but not under cross questioning or out of fear, but when I was giving my evidence and explaining the long term implications of releasing GM, both ecologically and politically- I broke down because I was fucking furious.
liz