--00_00_15_19-Still011.jpg?width=1200&auto=webp&crop=3%3A2)
Five Just Stop Oil activists convicted of plotting to disrupt flights in and out of Heathrow Airport are mounting an appeal, claiming their trial was tainted by “jury misconduct”.
Rosa Hicks, 29, Hannah Schafer, 61, Adam Beard, 55, Sally Davidson, 37, and Sean O'Callaghan, 30, were all convicted of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance following a trial at Isleworth crown court.
Eco-activists were intercepted by the Metropolitan Police near to the perimeter fence of the airport on July 24 last year, and were then charged with plotting to enter the runway and glue themselves to the tarmac.
Sentencing is currently due to take place next month, but could now be derailed as the group mount an appeal against their convictions.
In the challenge to the convictions, lawyers claim one juror “made internet searches about the defendants and the Just Stop Oil campaign” and is believed to have shared that information in the jury room.
The appeal bid also complains that Davidson was “wrongly arrested” mid-trial in a confusion over her bail conditions and a JSO supporter was detained in the court’s public gallery in view of a juror, which they say amounts to “prejudicial conduct” from police.
And the activists are set to appeal that the judge was wrong to prevent climate change evidence from being presented to the jury during the trial, wrongly failed to share a note about “irregularities” in the jury room, and also that the prosecutor gave a “misleading” impression of media coverage generated by the incident.
Sentencing is currently set to take place on May 16, while bids to challenge the convictions are being lodged in the Court of Appeal, urging senior judges to order a retrial.
“The prospect of facing a retrial is personally devastating but in the interest of justice we have no other option but to appeal these convictions”, said Davidson, a hairdresser from Portland, Dorset.
“Some of our group have now spent nine months in prison awaiting trial and now sentencing.”
Beard, a gardener from Stroud, is one of the activists who is currently in prison awaiting sentence, and he said: “For the sake of justice it is imperative that our convictions be quashed and my co-defendants who are still in prison be released.”
At the trial, the defendants argued that they had not planned to cause serious disruption to the airport’s operation.
Scotland Yard said after the convictions that two JSO groups had been intercepted that day and they were “in possession of angle grinders and glue”.
The force said the circumstances indicated they were planning to cut through the perimeter fence and glue themselves to the taxiway, a stretch of tarmac linking the aircraft hangar with the runway.
“If they had been successful, the group would have had to cross one of the airport’s runways, endangering the lives of themselves, airport staff and those on flights taking off and landing”, the Met added.
The activists say they had no intention of actually causing disruption, and believed they would be arrested at the perimeter fence or very swiftly after entering the airfield. Their aim was to generate publicity, they say.
