Four climate activists who blocked roads and caused traffic congestion in London face a possible retrial after a jury failed to reach verdicts.
Mary Adams, 69, Judith Bruce, 84, Lucy Crawford, 53, and Michael Brown, 52, helped block traffic between Bishopsgate and Wormwood Street on 25 October 2021.
Thousands of people on buses were held up as a result of the Insulate Britain protest, Inner London crown court was told.
Adams, Brown, Crawford and Bruce all denied causing a public nuisance, a common law offence that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Judge Reid had ruled that the defendants could not refer to the climate crisis as their motivation for blocking the road in their defence. Discharging the jury from reaching a verdict on Thursday, he said: “We don’t make juries go on forever until they reach a verdict.”
Three jurors had to be discharged after they tested positive for Covid, so all nine remaining jurors were required to reach a unanimous verdict.
“With three people down it was nine or nothing,” said Reid.
This week 23 people, including medics, Quakers, a retired detective sergeant, two teachers, a lawyer and Church of England priests risked arrest outside court by holding signs telling jurors they had the right to acquit based on their conscience.
One of them was Simon Bramwell, 50, who was one of five Just Stop Oil activists fined £175 each in February for gluing themselves to the frame of a copy of Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper painting at the Royal Academy on 5 July.
Referring on Friday to the protests outside court, Reid said: “The jury system only works when jurors are able to do their work without being interfered with by other people.”
Giving evidence, Adams, a charity worker from Australia, told jurors: “I have always been a law-abiding citizen until my recent involvement with climate protesting, particularly Insulate Britain, although I was shocked at the level of criminality attached to the serious offence of public nuisance.”
Adams told the court she “developed a love for the wilderness” in rural Australia. “My upbringing was one of very strong respect for law, fairness and justice. They are the values I have carried with me my whole life. They are my north star. My dad would be shocked to see me standing in the dock today.”
Adams said: “Disrupting people’s lives is the hardest part of any action. It is harder than the prospect of arrest or the possibility of imprisonment even. Some degree of disruption seems to be needed. I wish it wasn’t like that.
“I sincerely apologise for this. To engage in action like this I had to dig very deep into myself. My intention was not to cause really significant disruption to the public. It was to create disruption, and enough drama to attract the media.”
Adams said she received training before taking part in the action. “It is about empathising with people who are going to be disrupted in some way. When you are under pressure and nervous it is very easy to react instinctively. We did a lot of training not to do that. We want the government to honour its own commitments that it made. [The protest] was designed to be brief, dramatic and effective. None of us wanted to create disruption to the public.”
Adams said she was surprised by how long it took the police to deal with the protesters.
David Matthew, prosecuting, asked: “It seems that you were waiting for the police to come. Doesn’t that mean the decision is with the police?”
Adams replied: “I expected that the police could be there very quickly. At that time of year the police were aware that Insulate Britain were doing protests in the run-up to Cop26.”
Adams, of Greenwich, south-east London; Brown, of Hackney, east London; Crawford, of Cambridge; and Bruce, of Swansea, all denied causing a public nuisance.
The prosecution will announce whether there will be a retrial on 14 June. The judge said they might have to wait until next February for any such trial to take place.
