On July 23 the Court of Appeal overturned the convictions of Noel Molland, Steve Booth and Saxon Wood (the GAndALF 3).
The three had been convicted at Portsmouth Crown Court in November 1997 and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for conspiring with two others to ‘unlawfully incite persons unknown to commit criminal damage’ by reporting details of environmental and animal rights direct actions in Green Anarchist magazine and other publications. The three were initially arrested in March 1995, following a lengthy investigation by Hampshire Police code-named Operation Washington. They were re-arrested in January 1996, and underwent a two and a half month trial in 1997, culminating in their convictions. In March 1998, they were released on bail pending appeal by order of Mr Justice Smedley, after serving four and a half months of their sentence.
The appeal
The appeal centred on the form of the indictment and the directions given to the jury by the trial judge when summing-up. The indictment was not valid: it referred to criminal damage and not specifically to arson. The criminal damage was expressed to be contrary to Section 1(1) plus (3) of the Criminal Damage Act 1971; however, this is not an offence known to the law, because arson must be charged as such, and criminal damage can only be described as contrary to Section 1(1) and not an offence contrary to Section 1(1) plus (3). Section 1(3) concerns the offence of arson, but there was no charge of arson in the particulars of the offence, this being a requirement because the offence of arson carries the higher maximum penalty. The jury were not given any direction as to the separate offence of arson. Thus the count was defective and the procedure fatally flawed.
The judgement compares this case with another recent animal rights-related case heard by the Court of Appeal in November 1997, where there was an alleged conspiracy to commit offences of criminal damage. (R v Roberts and Others, concerning protests at Shoreham over live calve exports). The Court considered the procedure in this case to be fatally flawed, and allowed the appeal and quashed the convictions. The principles established by the Court in this case could be applied to the GA case, as the two cases were considered to be virtually indistinguishable.
In mitigation, the judgement says Booth had served in the RAF for 9 years, had no previous convictions and the vast bulk of his writing was of a non-inciting character. The Court accepted that he was not the most seriously involved in the material published and did not have editorial control over GA or GA Mail Order Service, which provided the most inflammatory incitements. Wood was a pacifist, describing himself as a peaceful environmentalist. He had no ALF links, no convictions, and has never written an inciting article. Molland had never met with any of the co-defendants prior to their first arrest, and had no previous convictions. He was clearly not the most seriously involved in the material published, did not have editorial control over GA and had no connection with GA Mail Order. Since early 1996 he has been a full-time volunteer with a homeless charity who value his contributions.
Judgement
In their judgment allowing the appeal, the Appeal Court judges (Lord Justice Henry, Sir Patrick Russell and His Honour Judge Beaumont QC) state that the appellants had been ‘sentenced on the basis that they were guilty of incitement to arson’ and question ‘whether the sentences passed were not excessive’, given the individual responsibility of the three, who were considered by the Court to have been ‘at the fringes of the network’ and not major players. The ‘trial judge may have over-emphasised both their influence and their individual responsibility …..They had ‘endured a long trial and have served the equivalent of nine month’s imprisonment’. They have ‘had these matters hanging over them now for more than three years since their first arrest’.
Despite the implications for press freedom, there has been a resounding silence from the mainstream media, which, with a few exceptions, ignored this case.
Writing about the case in the radical legal magazine The Law (PO Box 3878, London SW12 9ZE; issue July-September 1998)), Larry O’Hara made the following points:
- The judge, Justice Selwood, is the only serving judge who is a member of the Armed Forces.
- In his evidence, the police officer in charge of the case admitted that MI5 were involved.
- The prosecution’s view of Green Anarchist was that it became dangerous with the issue in which agent provocateur Tim Hepple was first published.
- Hepple was not interviewed by the police.
- Operation Washington, the name of the state operation against GAndALF, was the first joint operation in England over non-IRA matters carrried out by Special Branch and MI5 since 1992.