I will let others explain the exact procedure but there is a basic issue which will be becoming clear to ministers - a jury verdict sets no precedent, so the law is as it was, but a Court of Appeal decision would set an important precedent, which may not be the one the govt wants
Throughout yesterday people including government ministers were talking as if the Colston verdict set a precedent, which in legal terms is wrong. The irony of wanting to "do something" about it is that the "something" may cause an actual precedent to be set
One other point: on maybe the most important point in the case, whether "lawful excuse" element of the offence can include reference to the human rights concept of proportionality, this will ultimately be decided regardless of the Colston case as there will be other cases...
... as I know from my own work that the impact of Ziegler in the Supreme Court is still being worked out across other criminal offences, and criminal cases are being appealed to the High Court and beyond on that point.
And to return to the point I made yesterday, the government's #PolicingBill which criminalises various forms of peaceful protest includes a number of offences which include the "lawful excuse" element so that's another reason we will see a lot more of this
Some of the new offences the government is proposing to criminalise "disruptive protest" - a licence for Colston-type trials and verdicts to hugely proliferate. bills.parliament.uk/publications/4…
Every trial will have to include a proportionality assessment, which includes reference to freedom of speech and assembly, expert evidence on the importance of the cause etc etc. What a self-inflicted mess

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More from @AdamWagner1

6 Jan
It is being widely assumed (by critics) that the jury in Bristol acquitted inspite of the very clear law. We don't know why the jury acquitted but my understanding of the defences considered by the jury is it is entirely possible they acquitted because defendants had a defence Image
Which means this wasn't necessarily a jury just deciding that they didn't fancy applying the law, but rather a jury applying the law on the basis of the evidence they (and nobody else not in the court room) heard. The opposite of perverse.
Read 4 tweets
6 Jan
Re the story at the top, I was asked for a comment on this and said that I didn't think it was unreasonable for the BBC to ask for the names of potential claimants (which it offered to keep confidential) when responding to a pre-action letter. 1/2 thejc.com/news/news/outr…
It's normal in my experience for a potential party to litigation to expect to know who is potentially suing them.

My thoughts on the overall story is that the BBC need to account for what sound like serious mistakes in their coverage 2/2
My comment hasn't been published - I guess because it didn't fit with the narrative they wanted, which seems a bit unfair to the BBC (not least because we are talking here about questions of propriety) 3/3
Read 4 tweets
6 Jan
One thing about the #Colston4 acquittal the government should see as a warning: criminalising protest you don’t approve of (as is happening through the #PolicingBill) will have the opposite effect you want: politicisation of the courts and juries and more unlikely acquittals
The #Colston4 case was criminal damage so the acquittal was unusual. If the govt criminalises *peaceful* protest as planned, there will be many more arguments of this type, based on the protest being justified and the prosecution unjustified. And the public will sympathise.
In other words, be careful if you wish for peaceful protest to become a criminal issue because the public may not oblige your illiberal intentions.
Read 4 tweets
5 Jan
From the way this is described it sounds worrying and demonstrates the almost unlimited power of social media platforms to control speech when they want to, without accountability. Twitter should have an independent appeal system like Facebook now has through @OversightBoard
Social media platforms are not public authorities but they mediate public discourse in a way which is a lot like a public authority. They can learn a lot from human rights principles - including balancing between free speech and different social harms.
The Facebook @OversightBoard is certainly not perfect but it at least does attempt to use human rights and other principles to determine whether "moderation" decisions are appropriate or not, which is a start and should be what Twitter is doing too.
Read 4 tweets
3 Jan
I don’t know enough about US law but the language of the settlement agreement seems very wide - on its terms would seem to prevent Virginia Roberts from being involved any litigation ever again (which seems... odd) courtlistener.com/docket/6011936… Image
"other potential defendants" is defined earlier and it means "any other person or entity who could have been included as a potential defendant" - which I assume means "in this claim". That's the kind of term you see in settlement agreements. I doubt it goes wider than that Image
So the legal question is, I assume, whether Prince Andrew could have been included as a co-defendant in the claim by Virginia Roberts against Jeffrey Epstein. No way to know that without seeing the original claim documents, but Andrew was part of the general fact pattern I guess
Read 4 tweets
29 Dec 21
Alan Dershowitz used the interview to try and discredit Virginia Giuffre
All the BBC had to do was Google him
Read 4 tweets

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