On Thursday 27 March, at 9.00am a dozen Nottinghamshire residents sat outside Nottingham Crown Court, holding signs displaying the centuries old principle of ‘jury equity’.
Jury equity means that the jury has the right to find a defendant innocent even if the judge directs a guilty verdict. At 9.00 the group will deliver a letter addressed to the Judges at the court, emphasising the urgent need for British judges to uphold jury equity in their courtrooms.
High Court has recently ruled in favour of jury equity principle.
Hayley Walsh, 42, a Lecturer from Radcliffe on Trent said “The High Court’s message about the significance of jury equity doesn’t seem to have got through to a number of judges and they’re supposedly the educated elite of our country! It’s 2025 but some British judges are still stuck in the 1660s.
Jury equity has been enshrined in British Law for centuries. It’s intended to protect our courts from manipulation by vested interests or biased individuals who are intent on obtaining a conviction.
When Judges mislead jurors and bully them into finding people guilty against their conscience, then our legal system and democracy suffers.”
Eve Cina, 69, from Lady Bay, retired after working for 36 years in the criminal justice system including Crown Court said “If juries can’t take account of a defendant’s motivation for their actions when making their decisions, then what is the point of having a jury? Juries should be an important and essential check on the state’s powers and enhance democracy, but only if they can apply their conscience.”
Hundreds of other people are sitting at more than 20 Crown Courts across England and Wales, as part of the ‘Jury Equity Day’ organised by the Defend Our Juries campaign.
This local action marks the two year anniversary of Trudi Warner’s arrest for holding a sign displaying the principle of jury equity outside of a London court. Warner was pursued for contempt of court by the Government’s Attorney General for more than a year until the High Court ruled in April 2024 that she was within her legal rights to have held the signs at the court – calling the Attorney General’s pursuit “fanciful”, and that Warner’s sign “accurately informed potential prospective jurors about one of their legal powers.”
Nonetheless, British judges are still accused of ‘bullying’ juries
In February this year, Retired GP Diana Warner (no relation to Trudi Warner) was found guilty of ‘obstructing the railway’, for very briefly stopping a train headed to the world’s largest tree burning facility, DRAX.
The trial was derailed after jurors sought the advice of the judge (Judge Kearl KC), stating that “as a matter of conscience we are finding it difficult to come to a verdict”. Judge Kearl replied “You have all taken an oath or affirmation to try this case on the evidence, not your conscience”, seemingly ignoring last year’s high court ruling and denying jurors their centuries-old right to acquit a defendant according to their conscience. Following Judge Kearl’s intervention, the jury found Diana Warner guilty with a unanimous verdict, with Warner herself accusing the Judge of “bullying” jurors.
Judge Kearl’s intervention in Diana Warner’s case is merely the latest instance of judicial intimidation of jurors against applying their conscience. In March 2024 for example, Judge Silas Reid threatened a jury with criminal charges to stop them applying their conscience in the Trial of Five Women from Extinction Rebellion.
And as a ‘climate of injustice’ continues, jurors are still not hearing the whole truth
Just last week, 8 Just Stop Oil defendants were found guilty of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance at Heathrow. During the trial the judge removed all legal defences from the jury’s consideration, and ruled the climate emergency to be ‘irrelevant’.
This latest guilty verdict comes in the midst of a continued legal clampdown on climate and Palestine activists, with 30+ people still locked up in British prisons for taking action against the arms and fossil fuel industries.
