Court quashes fracking protesters' 'excessive' jail sentences

The court of appeal has quashed the sentences of three protesters jailed for blocking access to a fracking site, calling them “manifestly excessive”.

The lord chief justice, Sir Ian Burnett, said: “We have concluded that an immediate custodial sentence in the case of these defendants was manifestly excessive.

“In our judgment the appropriate sentence was a community order with a significant requirement of unpaid work. But these appellants have been in custody now for two weeks, the equivalent of a six-week prison sentence. As a result, and only for that reason, we’ve concluded that the only appropriate sentence is a conditional discharge.”

The activists, Simon Blevins, 26, Richard Roberts, 36, and Rich Loizou, 31, were jailed after a four-week trial last month led to their convictions for causing a public nuisance for a protest at Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road site in Lancashire. The decision means that Blevins, Roberts and Loizou will be released immediately from Preston prison.

The packed courtroom erupted with applause and some supporters began singing after the decision was announced.

Loizou’s father, Platon, said: “Justice has been done today. We shouldn’t be here in the first place, but justice has been done.”

The three men had climbed on to lorries outside Cuadrilla’s fracking site in a protest last July that lasted almost 100 hours. The three, who were the first environmental protesters to be imprisoned since 1932, were convicted of public nuisance after a trial at Preston crown court.

A fourth activist, Julian Brock, 47, was sentenced to 12 months in custody, suspended for 18 months, after he admitted public nuisance over the same protest. Brock did not challenge his sentence.

The appeal was supported by the human rights organisation Liberty and Friends of the Earth.

The three men had been granted an expedited appeal amid widespread anger at punishments that were held to be “excessive and extraordinary” for peaceful protesters.

Acting for the appellants, Kirsty Brimelow QC, head of the human rights team at Doughty Street Chambers, said that the prosecution’s claim that the appellants had caused serious disruption was not supported by the evidence.

In the original case, prosecutors had raised as proof of the disruption that a delivery of maggots had to be delivered on foot to a nearby aquarium.

“This was as serious as it got, that they had to wheelbarrow some live maggots into World of Water, rather than drive a truck,” Brimelow said.

Traffic disruption was limited to the imposition of a contraflow around the site of the protest that delayed traffic by, at most, 20 minutes, she said, adding: “We would dispute massive inconvenience.”

Brimelow said that the disruption had to be seen in the context that the same road had been subject to contraflows both the Friday before, and the Friday after, due to reasons other than protest, “so drivers were quite used to contraflows happening”.

“For the entire month of July there were contraflows on a Friday and anybody local knew that.”

She added: “These men now have a criminal conviction which will very much affect their future lives. In our submission that is enough, that is proportionate to what they did.

“What the judge has done is imprisoned these people for their views and for a peaceful protest and what’s happened as a result is that there has been a chilling effect on protest, and this is something that has not occurred for many many years.”

Brimelow said that the case was one that had caused public outrage, as the appellants were engaging in their rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, which include the freedom to protest, under articles 10 and 11 of the Human Rights Act. “Our submission is that Preston crown court did not keep its part of the convention when it sentenced these appellants,” she said.

“The appropriate sentences are one of absolute discharge or conditional discharge, because there are no aggravating factors. [The sentence] is manifestly excessive and wrong in principle.”