-Caveat Lector- http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/law/story/0,3605,426119,00.htm l Perverting the course of justice? They admitted it. The judge said they had no defence. But last week, two people who attempted to trash a nuclear submarine were acquitted. Marcel Berlins and Clare Dyer on why more and more juries are returning 'perverse' verdicts Special report: trial by jury Marcel Berlins and Clare Dyer Monday January 22, 2001 On the very day that the appeal court described the jury's verdict in the Bruce Grobbelaar libel trial in the most damning terms that judges can muster, virtually calling the jurors mad, another 12 men and women, in Manchester, were doing their bit to be added to the roll-call of juries for whom "perverse" is an honourable label. They brought in a verdict of not guilty on two anti-nuclear protesters charged with conspiracy to cause criminal damage to a Trident submarine in a Barrow-in-Furness shipyard. The two happily admitted their intention to trash the sub but said they were doing so because nuclear weapons were immoral and illegal. The judge told the jury that such ideals formed no defence against the charge. He was ignored. Not guilty, said the jury. It was not the first time that juries have, apparently contrary to the evidence, acquitted defendants charged with sabotage of defence equipment. But that strand of acquittals is itself part of a greater English tradition, going back to the trial of William Mead and William Penn, nonconformists charged in 1670 with unlawful preaching and conducting a seditious assembly. The jury was threatened by the judge and locked up for two nights "without meat, drink, fire or tobacco" after it refused to convict them but still stubbornly stuck to its verdict. The jurors were then fined and imprisoned till they paid, but were ultimately released by the Chief Justice, upholding "the right of juries to give their verdict by their conscience". A perverse verdict could just mean - as in the Grobbelaar case - a totally unreasonable conclusion from the evidence presented. But the more distinguished form of jury perversity arises when jurors in a criminal trial, following their consciences and their moral beliefs, acquit a defendant even where the evidence and the law clearly point to conviction. Lord Devlin, one of the great law lords, regarded the jury's right to bring in a perverse acquittal as one of the glories of our jury system. "It gives protection against laws which the ordinary man regards as harsh and oppressive . . . an insurance that the criminal law will conform to the ordinary man's ideas of what is fair and just. If it does not, the jury will not be a party to its enforcement." In 1985, Clive Ponting, a senior Ministry of Defence official, was tried under the Official Secrets Act for revealing to an MP that government ministers had misled Parliament over the sinking of the Argentine warship General Belgrano during the Falklands War. There was no doubt that he had done so and that he had no legal defence to the charge, as the trial judge made clear to the jury. Nevertheless the jury acquitted him. Jurors may not be asked why they reached a particular verdict, but it emerged that some of them resented the patronising and over-emphatic way in which the trial judge, in effect, ordered them to convict. Another factor was the feeling that the "catch-all" section of the Official Secrets Act under which Ponting was charged and which allowed no public interest defence was unfair and oppressive. Even more striking was the acquittal at the Old Bailey in 1990 of Pat Pottle and Michael Randle, on a charge of helping the Soviet spy George Blake escape from Wormwood Scrubs in 1963, enabling him to flee to Russia. This was not just a case of a jury disregarding the judge's clear - and legally correct - instruction that the two men had no defence. The jury knew for a fact that they were guilty - not least because they had published a book entitled The Blake Escape - How We Freed George Blake and Why. As if that wasn't enough, Pottle and Randle, defending themselves, confirmed their responsibility for the crime and made impassioned speeches from the dock. They argued that bringing them to court 26 years after the crime was an abuse of the legal process and showed a political motive behind their prosecution. The jury was clearly impressed and acquitted, knowing that it was delivering a perverse verdict, showing two fingers to a system that would behave in this way. Nor is it just in highly publicised cases raising quasi-political or social issues that juries have shown their bolshie independence. Away from the headlines, juries often acquit guilty defendants simply because they feel strongly that no prosecution should have been brought. Forgetful elderly shoplifters are frequent beneficiaries of jury anger at their being in the dock at all. In the 19th century, juries used to find defendants not guilty of crimes they had clearly committed because the penalties - a death sentence or long imprisonment - were so disproportionate to the crime (stealing a sheep, for instance). The modern equivalent is the jury that refuses to convict a mercy killer of murder, even when all the ingredients of the crime are present, because a murder conviction means an automatic life sentence. The result is that mercy killers often escape with a conviction for manslaughter, and a lighter sentence, on the often spurious grounds of diminished responsibility. Peace protestors have a long record of successful appeals to the jury's conscience. In the 1970s a group led by the well-known campaigner Pat Arrowsmith were charged under the 1934 Disaffection Act for leafleting troops at Aldershot and acquitted after a 51-day trial, despite overwhelming evidence against them. The trial took place before the Contempt of Court Act 1981 put a firm lid on jury revelations, and some jurors revealed afterwards that they had made up their minds to clear the defendants after just five days. In recent years lawyers have put forward ingenious defences to con vince juries to acquit their clients. A string of anti-nuclear protesters including Sylvia Boyes and Keith Wright, the anti-Trident activists acquitted last week, have pleaded that their actions were necessary to prevent a greater evil. The pair, members of Trident Ploughshares, were caught in wet suits near the Trident submarine Vengeance, docked in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, in November 1999. They were carrying hammers, an axe and six cans of aerosol polish and admitted they intended to damage the sub, which was equipped to carry one-quarter of Britain's nuclear arsenal. They were acquitted of conspiracy to cause criminal damage by a Manchester jury after arguing that their actions were justified because nuclear weapons were immoral and in breach of international law. Politicians could not be trusted to act, so they had to step in to prevent disaster. In 1996 a Liverpool jury similarly acquitted two women charged with causing £1.5m damage to a Hawk fighter jet to prevent its use in the bombing of East Timor by Indonesia, contravening international law. In another series of prosecutions, people with multiple sclerosis or other painful illnesses charged with using, growing or supplying cannabis have pleaded that the drug was the only means of relieving their pain. Juries have acquitted almost all those accused. Last September, Lord Melchett, executive director of Greenpeace, and 27 other environmental activists who trashed a field of genetically modified maize in Norfolk in July 1999 successfully pleaded that their action was justified to prevent the contamination of nearby organic crops. Under the Criminal Damage Act 1971, an accused has a defence if he acted to protect other property that he believed was in imminent danger, using means that he believed reasonable in the circumstances. Maybe the jury really believed the Greenpeace 28 were justified in their aim of uprooting the whole crop to prevent flowering and pollination, possibly contaminating nearby crops. Or maybe, like many of their fellow citizens, they just didn't like the idea of GM foods. Scimac, the industry body representing the company that developed the GM maize, said after the trial that the verdict raised "fundamental questions about the ability of our legal system to cope with the gradual erosion of respect for public rights and authority". Perverse verdicts show that juries don't like stigmatising people they don't really regard as criminals. It offends them to have to convict an MS sufferer who takes a few illegal puffs to alleviate pain. They're also reluctant to make criminals out of defendants who think like them and have the same world view. And jurors don't want to risk sending to prison those who act out of genuine public interest or moral concern, even if they break the letter of the law. Most juries heed the judge's warnings and convict on the evidence, not on their feelings. But more and more jurors, it seems, are following their consciences. Perverse verdicts are on the rise. 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