Sell To Jews At Your Own Risk
Well that’s an unexpected turn-up for the books: it’s now legally okay to destroy the property of those who do business with Jews. Last time that was really popular was Kristallnacht in 1938 but hey, ho, that probably makes it retro fashion, eh?
This extraordinary moment in modern British legal history took place this week in the southern English coastal city of Brighton – a city known for its strong affiliations with the Green Party and other leftist causes. It transpired in a case involving five defendants who had broken into the EDO MBM owned arms factory in January 2009 at the time of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.
The five admitted breaking into the factory – which was exporting military equipment at the time to Israel – and causing £180,000 ($275,000) worth of damage. Despite actually admitting to an offence that would usually carry a substantial jail sentence, the jury acquitted them, accepting their defence that although they had committed a crime they were doing so in order to prevent the greater offence of Israeli “war crimes”.
This is not exactly unprecedented – British juries have previously decided that power plants can be attacked in the name of the new religion of global warming. We used to be all equal before the law, but it seems that some causes are more equal than others.
Hat-tip: The comments of Biased-BBC and via Moonbattery
The Judge should be up in court.
In his summing up, the Judge virtually directed the jury to find them not guilty. It’s more than ridiculous, it’s ominous. I don’t see where they get their brains. People do have power but they’re exercising it in the wrong ways and can no longer distinguish between the preference of the state and those of the individual.
That axe swings both ways: that if it’s legal, or not illegal to destroy what one doesn’t approve of morally from the Left, then there is no sense in obeying the law from the right. In effect, there is no “law” but whimsy. We see the seeds of a version of Popular Justice sown here.
That’s the trouble with juries – they often don’t do what you think they ought to do. I remember Penguin books (Lady Chatterley), Clive Ponting being acquitted, the ‘self-defence’ bloke who went way over the top but still got off, and others on right and left. A long time ago a judge had a jury locked up because they came to (in his eyes) a perverse verdict; the judge was duly reprimanded – although, sadly, not locked up. But when accused of bopping the Eye over the head because he articulated some of his more outrageous views I would still prefer to put my fate in the hands of a jury
XX the jury acquitted them, accepting their defence that although they had committed a crime they were doing so in order to prevent the greater offence XX
GREAT!!! This now means that a person is quite justified in going out and shooting his local drugs dealer. “CASE LAW Your honour!”
The summing up is indeed a key thing to consider. A judge can heavily sway a jury in favour of his own opinion and sometimes a jury can lash back with a deliberately perverse response. Neither outcome serves justice.
Exactly; you pick your cause and just go for it. This is a precedent for a defence to firebombing abortion clinics. Burning down MPs second homes. Kidnapping bankers. Killing lorry drivers in case they might become serial murderers of prostitutes (Clarkson). Anything you like.
Once the genie is out of the bottle, it can’t be put back in. This one will be dragged up again and again. Wait for the claims to get ever more tenuous and unlikely.
An interesting advert for the US system of confirmation hearings when judges are looking at promotion, don’t you think? That’s the closest approximation to effective accountability or scrutiny in use at the moment.
By all means place yourself in the hands of a jury, but as we are both in Gib you’ll remember the recent scandalous number-crunching showing that non-Gibraltarians are several times more likely to be convicted by a jury than locals. Having done jury service I’d contend that it is the seond worst solution for justice imaginable. Only just pipped for first by “most other ideas”.