The judgment should be interesting….. It appears that the Court thought @paulchambers tweet was ‘obviously menacing”… I must not, of course, (Being interested in the *Rule of Law*) prejudge the publication of the judgment (*Assuming one will – unlikely) … but… I will in the sense of commenting on the *situation*…. and if our courts really think the tweet Paul Chambers posted on Twitter was a real threat and ‘menacing’ (Police/Airport staff did not appear to do so) then we really need to do some serious thinking about our civil liberties, our freedoms, and our stance on terror…
This is a disgrace and undermines my faith in our legal system…and, I suspect, many others will be of this view as well.
A lot of people do a great deal to support our legal system; the lawyers who work for not a lot of money at the coal face of daily law, government, those who support the the ideals of democracy – this case – judging by very obvious anger on twitter – has done a great deal to undermine public faith and belief in not British justice… but justice in England & Wales… (Scotland has a different legal system – Also Northern Ireland)
WE MUST DO – AND DESERVE – BETTER THAN THIS….
I won’t be arrested for saying this (I assume.. although nothing is certain, it would seem) …. I won’t be prosecuted for saying this (ditto) …. I do not practice… so I can’t even be censured… (pretty sure on that one). We really do need to sort our legal system out if it can bring about such an absurd and unjust result….. even if *The Law* justifies the decision of the judge as framed… if that is the case.. we need better laws..and we do deserve them.
Charon QC 
I would have thought that if he meant it as a serious threat he might have taken some steps to preserve anonymity? It is certainly unusual of genuine terrorists to make an announcement like this, give a weeks notice and provide their details.
A warning. I feel like a real Daily Mail git having written the following, and I’m ashamed of myself.
I rather fear our friendly joker should have taken his medicine quietly. Problem is, it’s only simple to differentiate between a failed bit of humour and a genuine threat once the moment has passed.
So I’m lacking in sympathy. There’s not that much difference between this guy, and the berk who ‘hilariously’ tells the staff at the check-in desk that they’re carrying a bomb. It’s obviously a joke, but it’s hardly a free speech issue. British fair play? I think that went out with the ark.
There’s no such thing as a ‘private remark’ on Twitter – and (Chris Morris aside) there’s not a lot of humour to be garnered from what appears – in an emotional vacuum – to be a threat to blow up an airport. We could all mangle something about eternal vigilence and the price of liberty – but I’m rather comforted that systems are in place to not only discourage – but also to catch up with – people who make threats which only appear idle after the fact.
Obviously this has dragged on too long. But when should it have been dropped? When it became obvious it was a joke? When he apologised? When it turned out he wasn’t a muslim?
Please tell me I’m wrong and the sky won’t fall in tomorrow.
We’ve become hysterical. I’m hysterical that we’re hysterical. Goverment is hysterical because terrorists are hysterical. Terrorists are hysterical, well, because they’re middle Eastern and that’s what we do (I’m half Persian – don’t shoot. Unless you’re Middle Eastern, in which case, before you get hysterical, at least count to ten and give me a sporting chance to get away. I would do the same for you – I’m also half British, which means I’m not likely to shoot back).
Can I get arrested for alledging attempted murder yet?
Anyway, we need to find our British Backbone. I suspect we lost it somewhere in between accomodating Sharia courts which allow stoning and America’s tushy.
WAIVER/DISCLAIMER: All jokes about middle eastern peoples are not to be taken as incitement to do bad stuff/seriously. The authoress is also aware that not all middle eastern peoples are hysterical.
Are we good, Charon, or do I need to cover myself with further indemnities? Insurance? Security guard?
*Goes into hiding*
The Grinch… David Allen Green has all the facts on his website. I understand that the airport security desk did not regard it as real threat… nor the Police….
I, too, am pleased that we have sensible security in place – but I also worry about the future for our country if we can end uf shooting ourselves in the foot on such an issue……
There are really serious issues out there… and police, security services, lawyers, MPs, ….well …all of us, really, may be better served if we focus on the truly serious stuff?
🙂
I just feel utterly sick, if these laws are meant to make us feel safer they’ve failed totally. I’m more worried about the reach and scope of our draconian legal system than I am about the 15,000,000 to 1 chance I might have an unfortunate meeting with a terrorist.
Words fail me on this. That we have a legal system and judiciary that would appear to be unable to look beyond the literal meaning of a few words. I’m astonished, and appalled. It would now appear that everything that we ever send electronically could now be subject to an arbitrary and literal interpretation without recourse to balance, context, public interest or, dare I say, common sense.
Who knows when the next case will turn up of this sort. Not only is their this act interpreted in a manner far beyond far beyond the scope of what was originally conceived, but we also have, courtesy of the last government, a whole raft of new legislation that might be applied on discussions on sensitive subjects. I used to console myself that these would only be applied in extreme and clear-cut cases. However, I’m now far from certain out justice and legal system can be trusted with the power that parliament has given them. It’s of absolutely no consolation to me that some of the prosecutions have been of Moslem protesters.
Frankly I feel sod them. I’m not particularly inclined to hyperbole, but I’m also not going to go into a wholly unnatural level of self-censorship and worry about a bunch of small-minded literalists.
We might well have a similar case. A Conservative councillor, Gareth Compton, has been arrested about a tweet he made involving a distinctly unfunny and vindictive “joke” he made about JYasmin Alibhai-Brown. Unless this was truly meant as a threat, it seems to me that the appropriate punishment is what he is getting. A pillorying in the press, being dropped as a candidate and from the party and a grovelling apology (of course if he meant it literally, then he deserves what might come his way).
http://www.politics.co.uk/news/policing-and-crime/tory-councillor-arrested-over-stoning-comments-$21385550.htm
Hmmm, I am not surprised by the verdict, which does not necessarily mean I agree with it, I simply do not know enough about the finer details of the case.
What I will say is that behind every law and/or prosecution, there is a public policy decision (read motive). The policy decision in this case MAY BE one to discourage “joke” threats, whether on Twitter or elsewhere IN ORDER TO minimise the “leads” the police and security services have to follow up on a daily basis. We know resources there are not unlimited and already they are following up on dozens if not hundreds of leads every day (that is not a fact, just my assumption).
Some genuine threats may go un-investigated because of the sheer volume of leads, jokes or otherwise. It just takes one nutter to publicly utter a genuine threat which is “missed” or not taken seriously, and which is later actually carried out and police/security services heads will roll, not to mention any damage to life/limb/property, which of course is the result none of us wants.
Is this a free speech issue? No, I do not believe so. If I utter something which you perceive as menacing, then I have done wrong, in the same way I must not incite racial hatred by making inflammatory or menacing comments.
Is this a civil liberty vs security issue? Possibly, and the balance may have gone too far towards “security”. It will be interesting to see how the case ends up further down the line.
Finally, was it the case that the Yorkshire Ripper might have been apprehended sooner and some lives saved had it not been for all the hoax calls which diverted police resources?
Yours etc etc
Art
Steve – agree…. Compton’s tweet was nasty and unpleasant…. but bringing the Police is is not the way to deal with him…… he did not mean as threat… that is clear from the context… even to the most stupid of judges?
We shall see.. the Police have arrested him and are, no doubt, heading for a court *Somewhere sympathetic* ? I do hope not.
@Art Li
I think the true story behind this is that having gone through the whole rigmarole of arresting Paul Chambers in a highly public manner on a charge that was obviously not appropriate, that it escalated out of control. There were police and prosecution resources, money spent, credibility to protect. Essentially they had to find something to justify all this, and thus we ended up with this ridiculous situation.
One starts to wonder if the judiciary also gets unconsciously sucked into this whole protection of credibility issue.
Steve Jones
Face saving may well have played a part. But as of now, there will be far fewer people making silly threats regarding national security on Twitter or elsewhere, objective of the prosecution achieved? Hmmm… I will leave it there.
Art
@Art Li
the whole point it wasn’t a silly threat. That was the offence he was arrested for. Issuing a hoax bomb threat. If he had don so and been prosecuted on those grounds, then nobody would have had a problem with it. However, he wasn’t prosecuted for that as the CPS clearly appreciated there was no case to answer. Instead they picked up a law which was placed on the statute books to deal with the very real problem of people making personally threatening phone calls.
I think you should think very carefully about the implications of any badly worded or ill-thought out joke being interpreted literally by the judiciary. Nobody, repeat nobody – police or airport authorities thought this was a credible threat, nor was there any disruption to service or any other consequence. They are on record as saying so.
The example you gave of hoax calls with respect to the Yorkshire Ripper case illustrates this. They were deliberate hoaxes. I’ll repeat again, if Paul Chambers had sent a message to the airport with a hoax threat, then nobody would have a problem with this. Instead we’ve had the sledgehammer of the law applied to a communication between a few friends which was only every picked up by the airport via a random search. If that search hadn’t have happened, then nobody would have been the any the wiser.
Truly laughable.
[…] is Alex Massie’s reaction to the appeal, along with pieces by Charon QC and Heresy Corner. Tags: bad law, big brother, control freaks, not in my name, scary, state vs […]
I’m glad I no longer practice law. Justice has not been served today, in fact, justice looks somewhat farcical. Can you see her blushing?
Steve Jones
As I said, I don’t know enough about the case so cannot debate with you why he was arrested in the first place, charged with or what effect it had (or not as the case maybe). My comment was about the POSSIBLE wider policy decision behind the prosecution.
Soemtimes, it is easier to identify a threat as “empty” or “silly” with hindsight.
Art
@Art Li
http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2010/09/why-paul-chambers-case-matters.html
Everything you need to know about the case.
Read it, and you’ll see why people are up in arms about this.
Additionally, you’ll save the rest of us the hassle of having to spoon-feed you information you’re too lazy to Google.
David J Mudkips
Please read my original comment. I don’t need to be spoon-fed the facts of the case. I was NOT arguing the correctness of the verdict.
I was merely commenting on the possible policy decision behind the prosecution.
I am not lazy, but thank you for your kind and generous comment.
Art
As I have said elsewhere, Twitter = haiku for morons.
So all terrorists have to do now is sitback and take it easy whilst every now and then sending out a ‘terror tweet’!
l feel as though l’m dreaming and caught in a Monty Python sketch.
“justice in England & Wales… (Scotland has a different legal system – Also Northern Ireland)”
True, though probably worth pointing out that the statute he was charged under is in force throughout the UK, so there’s still the potential for a Scottish or N Irish court to come to the same view.
David – Yes….. you are right… but I was expressing a concept. Hopefully no other courts… in England, Scotland or NI will apply the law on this in the same way!
As you (rightly) say, we cannot pre-empt the judgment IF (and it is a big IF) one is actually published. This is an appeal against conviction from the magistrates’ court to the crown court.
Such appeals are by way of rehearing the case and they are heard by a Judge sitting with lay justices. It is the only time justices ever sit in Crown Court and is a survival from the old Quarter Sessions abolished by the Courts Act 1971. A written judgment is probably unlikely.
As In understand it, the charge was under the Communications Act 2003 s127. On the authority of DPP v Collins [2006] UKHL 40 this requires “mens rea” and that decision obviously is binding on the Crown Court.
http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/2006/40.html
As you say, J of K is highly likely to cover this. Certainly hope that he does.
Enough law for today !! Just spent the evening wrestling with the new European Union Bill – my head hurts – time for a “wee dram.”
I’m a deeply confused ordinary person.
I understand that threatening to blow something sky high could be seen as a threat by other confused ordinary people like me, especially when a judge tells me that’s what I’m supposed to think.
What I seem to have missed about these times of serious security risk is the context that makes the tweet threatening.
Which terrorist group believes so fervently in keeping airports open that they would rather blow them up than let them be temporarily closed?
I have googled ‘airport worship’ and ‘free united republic of airports’ and found nothing.
Is the problem that ordinary people like me can put two sentences together to get the meaning, but judges cannot?
JacAbsolute – what a great comment. *The Reasonable Person on The Clapham Omnibus* Lives !
Look up *Reasonable man on Clapham Omnibus* on Google… may make you smile!
I have a nephew with Asperger’s. He is a lovely kid but he suffers certain disadvantages. One is that he cannot recognise irony. He only apprehends the literal meaning of what you say to him. I had always thought hat would be a problem for him in later life but it appears that a career in the police or on the bench may well be within his grasp.
Whilst we are on an Alice theme, then this truly reminds me of a Looking-Glass case, albeit with the mirage of menace in the original Tweet reflected into a surreal, yet truly menacing one in the machinations of the legal and judicial system. From reports, it would appear that the judge’s view is “‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean” including those of “menacing” and “ordinary” as I think many of us have trouble with her definitions.
I’m also tempted to suggest that, in the not wholly disimilar Compton case, that if somebody suggested Yasmin Alibhai-Brown should get stoned in the intoxicated, rather than biblical punishment, sense, it might do her a lot of good, even if Professor David Nutt might not approve. She is inclined to be far too serious.
The following passages from the House of Lords judgment in the case of DPP v Collins (2006) may be of interest. This case was referred to by Mr Chambers’ legal team as well as the Judge in the recent appeal. The case concerned offensive messages but the wording of S.127(1) includes menacing messages too. (Capitalisation below is mine) :-
“The very act of sending the message over the public communications network … constitutes the offence even if it was being communicated to someone who the sender KNEW WOULD NOT BE IN ANY WAT OFFENDED or distressed by it”.
Lord Bingham of Cornhill : “it must be proved that the respondent intended his words to be offensive to those to whom they related or BE AWARE THAT THEY MAY BE TAKEN TO BE SO.” … “It can make no difference to criminal liability whether a message is ever actually received or WHETHER THE PERSONS WHO DO RECEIVE IT ARE OFFENDED BY IT.”
It appears the Judge was therefore applying and following the Collins precedent.
Art
Art – I understand the point you are making. I do, however, feel that our law is badly formulated if a result such as this in the Chambers case can be arrived at….
Law that is disrespected by many – and we have seen a fair example of that on Twitter today – is not conducive to the public good.
The rule of law is a complex concept and relies on the consensus and goodwill of the people subject to the law. We are about to celebrate 800 years of Magna carta. Lord Neuberger and The Lord Chancellor were at Runnymede only this morning…..
I don’t need to labour the Magna Carta metaphor to a fellow lawyer….. or, indeed, anyone with an interest in our history and constitution.
If this is taken to extremes – then many disagreeable statements are capable of coming within this definition and then we are truly doomed…..
There is a place for a common sense approach to be taken into the application of our laws….. and if that can’t be done by the judiciary, then we simply have to get the law changed so that we don’t have these manifestly absurd cases.
Charon
Completely agree, but I go back to my original comment yesterday about a “public policy” decision to prosecute. Common sense is not common.
Art
[…] http://twitter.com/limeybloke/status/26478243763 https://charonqc.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/law-review-twitter-joke-trial-a-travesty-why-do-we-really-b… http://thethoughtstash.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/twitter-joke-trial-a-layman-journalists-view/ […]
@Art Li
To my knowledge not a single witness testified to the effect that they did find this a menacing message. I’m sure if you hunt round then such persons could be located, but from the reports I read the judge resorted to inventing a fictitious elderly couple who could have felt alarmed. Of course I wasn’t there, but this is as I understand it.
From that interpretation it would appear that it is only necessary to imagine the possibility of somebody who on reading such a message might feel menaced. Is this notional person who might have read such a message got to be of the normal type, or might they be somebody of an especially nervous disposition? This strikes me as verging on the insane.
@ Art Li
But as of now, there will be far fewer people making silly threats regarding national security on Twitter or elsewhere, objective of the prosecution achieved?
Honestly, I see an awful lot of people making threats today. None of them is seriously meant.
#iamspartacus
Steve
It seems to me quite clear from the above passages from the (now) Supreme Court ruling in DPP v Collins that there is no need to adduce evidence in court that anyone felt the tweet was menacing. All the prosecution had to prove was that a person in Chambers’ position (re age, experience, education, frequent use of airports blah blah) made that tweet, and he must have been AWARE THAT THE TWEET MAY BE TAKEN TO BE MENACING by someone/anyone who reads it first hand on Twitter or elsewhere.
There was no dispute that he made the tweet, and I believe the judge (and original district judge) accepted the prosecution argument and made a “finding of fact” that Chambers must have been so aware as above.
That “imaginary” person as you put it does not have to be of any type of disposition, he may just take the tweet at face value and take it literally. And if that is the case, it can support the conviction.
Appeal courts are notoriously reluctant to overturn a “finding of fact” below unless it is, amongst other things, perverse; I am not convinced that the judge’s finding was perverse. Therefore I feel Chambers has a battle on his hands.
I wish him good luck, he will need plenty of it.
Art
Scotslawstudent
I think people in authority would accept the hundreds (or thousands?) of amost identical IamSpartacus tweets are simply mocking the judgment and the law, and should not be treated seriously. However, the original tweet was made in a completely different environment.
I am also not entirely convinced that those mocking tweets would ultimately be helpful to Mr Chambers’ case.
Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of sympathy for Mr Chambers and I am only expressing my view of why I was not surprised about the judgment. No more no less.
Art
[…] this post from CharonQC, for example. It refers to some of his tweets on the […]
‘I do, however, feel that our law is badly formulated if a result such as this in the Chambers case can be arrived at….’
well yes charon, but many laws are badly drafted and it comes back to the ‘guns don’t kill people…’
you can use most laws for a stupid or inhumane or just plain wrong purpose. that is why there is a requirement to exercise judgment and decide whether bringing a prosecution is in the public interest. and clearly this one isn’t. as the spartaci are shouting loud and clear.
and we can’t blame the labour government for this one.
@Art Li
quote “…..and he MUST have been aware that the tweet may be taken to be menacing by someone/anyone who reads it first hand on Twitter or elsewhere.”
Is where the CPS and judiciary, in their quest to out-stupid each other, ignored the facts of his police statement, given whilst under charge for a separate offence …[ I didn’t realise, not for one second did I think that anyone would even look at it]…
It therefore cannot be argued that this is a ‘finding of fact’. In truth it can only be seen as a wilfull contempt for the facts, in the light of the introduction of the imaginary victims of apparent menace.
The CPS made a mistake to waste our tax revenue prosecuting the case in the first instance and now the judiciary are wrapped up in a process of employing bizarre logic to advance a notion that justice is somehow being served.
By any sensible evaluation of this saga, it is at best a vulgar abuse of law by those who are charged with delivering justice.
@Merlin
Just because someone denies doing something, it does not mean the court cannot disbelieve him and make a finding of fact that he did do something. That is what Magistrates/District judges/juries do everyday. If a denial from the minute someone is arrested means no conviction is possible, then every defendant will ensure he denies everything from the start.
Further, the law often makes use of imaginary people – the man on the street, or on the Clapham Ominnbus, the reasonable man – to gauge what the “objective” standard is, what Joe Blogg would think or feel, as opposed to what the defendant “subjectively” thinks or feels.
It is late but I hope that makes sense.
Art.
PS. Re my last comment, denial of deed (ie I didn’t do something) can also be read as denial of knowledge (ie I didn’t know something).
Art
Interesting that this “finding of fact” is just a legalistic dressing up for an opinion of a couple of people of the interpretation of a few words. Rather a different use of the word fact to the one used in my, non-legal, but very much evidence-based education.
I’m sure judges are extremely skilled in the interpretation of law, but when it comes to a decision on what an ordinary person might consider menacing, then it seems to me they are no more able than those very same ordinary people. In fact I suspect that the sort of “ordinary” people that use Twitter would be even more skilled at assessing if something is menacing.
It’s a shame this isn’t an offence open to a jury trial. Then we might at least have some “ordinary” people able to make their assessment on whether the message was menacing or not. As it is, we still haven’t found a single person that testified they found it actually so at a personal level. Instead we have this bizarre idea that we have to allow for the possibility of some group postulated by a judge that would find it menacing without, so far as I can see, any test for what that word means. At least in the other provisions of the messages (about obscenity and offensiveness), there are some very high thresholds that have to be crossed. This one is just a nonsense.
@ Art Li
My emphasise on the word MUST. Of course a judge can decide any witness statement is untrue. Clearly in this case the court decided he MUST have been lying in that statement. Evidence of that appears to be the fictional couple. The logic being apparently, that if a judge can imagine any scenario where a defendant MIGHT, or COULD, or SHOULD have been aware of something, then it can be decided that he MUST have been aware of that something. Even when it flies in the face of his initial statement in response to a different charge.
The logic employed to convict the defendant is woefully inadequate. If it is now being lauded as a ‘finding of fact’, then something is very broken with the legal system, or rather how it is being manipulated to achieve an end which has nought to do with justice.
Steve Jones & Merlin
Re the “fictional couple”, “ordinary man”, yes those are legalistic concepts. I don’t kow when the judgment will be published and we can all pore over it at that time to see how much emphasis Judge Davies placed on those concepts, or not as the case may be.
For now, all my comments above are about the possible policy decision to prosecute (in the first place) and how DPP v Collins might have influenced the verdict and outcome of appeal.
FWIW, I believe that if this had been a jury trial, the result would have been different.
And thanks for your comments on my comments.
Art
[…] hat. Comment on the conviction of Chambers for so-called ‘menacing’ remarks from both blawggers and bloggers (and pupil blawgers and more bloggers) alike has been pretty much universally […]
I share sympathy with Mr Chambers and the sentence shouldn’t be too harsh, but I certainly agree with the guilty verdict! It would be very dangerous indeed to start second guessing whether threats made were jokes or not. Otherwise a real criminal making a threat could do it in a humourous way and use that as a defence. Mr Chamber was a complete idiot to post such a tweet and should accept that and apologise instead of trying to make himself a martyr out of such a ridiculous and legally uninteresting issue!
Where is the second guessing here? Second guessing a threat is where someone has a gun to someone’s head and say “Stop or I’ll shoot”. There was no second guessing here, he just failed to do anything related to carrying through his statement.
“Real threats” do not exist in a vacuum. “Real threats” do not involve just one throwaway comment on twitter. In that way it’s a case of having a law for it already; using threats to get money or action out of people – extortion, threatening to release a bomb – a bomb threat, threatening to release compromising information to get money or action out of people – blackmail.
Saying mean things about major companies on Twiiter – obscene, menacing or threatening communications sent over a public telecommunications network?
@scotslawstudent: Ok, YOU may have immediately considered it a joke, and not a real threat. The airport may also have not have considered it a real threat. However, my point is you cannot be so sure this is the case for every person who may have read that tweet.
Thousands of other people were due to travel to that airport and could potentially have seen the message and been distressed by it. I accept most of them won’t have been, but such a message could certainly appear threatening or menacing to some people and therefore it fits into the current law that you stated.
I thought your point was that we shouldn’t second guess threats?
I would have thought that one of these people who were distressed by the message would have been an excellent witness. We have people testify that they felt distressed in obscenity trials and menace and blackmail and extortion and threatening trials – in fact, getting the injured victim to stand up and say how they feel is often the centrepiece of the trial – was there anyone like that in this trial?
I am glad the law shows common-sense and doesn’t require us to waste further resources seeking these people.
@Garry
I’m assuming you are making a surreal joke here. The prosecution isn’t required to show real evidence of somebody having been menaced, it’s merely sufficient to postulate such a person on the basis that there is bound to be somebody, somewhere who would have felt threatened. After all, there those with Asperger’s who find it very difficult to follow irony and would have felt menaced if they’d come across the post.
It saves so much public money this way. We can, perhaps, populate our courts with imaginary characters from Second Life and thereby avoid the unjustified expense of having to call real witnesses.
Perhaps we can suggest this to Ken Clarke. He is in the market for money-saving ideas.
[…] have made some coments on https://charonqc.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/law-review-twitter-joke-trial-a-travesty-why-do-we-really-b… and some of those comments are reproduced below: Hmmm, I am not surprised by the verdict, which […]
Let’s really boil down what’s going on in a criminal trial. Getting a witness to testify is not wasting further resources. It is almost essential to the exercise.
If you’re prosecuting murderers you don’t decide you should not waste further resources on finding the body or the weapon or something people in the trade call “evidence”.
In flasher trials you don’t say “Between you and me, my Lord, I’m sure someone, somewhere would have been offended by that if they had seen it so the prosecution rests” – you get the person who was flashed to come to court and ask them some questions about it. This is how our courts work, apparently until this case.
Unless of course this actually is a surreal joke (@Steve Jones, good point – Second Life witnesses) in which case I do apologise, the joke went right over my head. Frankly, I pray that it did.
[…] But the fact remains that something like this can occur here, in Britain, in 2010. As Charonqc says, it’s absurd that the justice system is incapable of distinguishing between a joke and a […]
[…] to the legal fund here. Please do.UPDATE: See Heresy Corner for more good stuff on this. Also Charon QC. Tags: Britain, Courts, O Tempora, O Mores, Twitter PreviousThe Ashes: Post-War XIsAlex Massie11 […]
[…] the CPS and the State gets all prosecutions right. #twitterjoketrial comes to mind. (Also here: Law Review: Twitter Joke Trial – A travesty… why do we really bother?) I wonder how much that fiasco […]