Sinking ships & global injustice: week 11 of the Combe Haven trials

February 11, 2014 by combehavendefenders

Foreground: the five defendants for trial #5

The verdicts for trials #4 and #5 will be given at Brighton Magistrates Court on 12 and 18 March respectively. Defendants have been told to appear at 10am. The address is: The Law Courts, Edward Street, BN2 0LG.

The second week of Trial #5 began with Clare Sandbrook, boss of Shergroup, giving evidence about the warrants which authorised the bailiffs to remove people from the land.

Courtroom sketch by Emily Johns: a defendant gives evidence.

Even though the warrants were issued by East Sussex County Council (ESCC) to Clare Sandbrook personally, and she had helped ESCC to draft them, she seemed unfamiliar with one when it was handed to her in the witness box. Chief Inspector Keating then took the witness stand to explain the arrest policy he had had in place for the protests, specifically that protestors in trees who expressed a wish to come down and needed help to do so would not be arrested.

The warrants issue rumbled on with further evidence from, amongst others, a Mr Grout, head of legal services for ESCC ,who explained how he only noticed that the dates were missing from the warrants as the courier arrived to whisk them off into the hands of the bailiffs in the valley.

Running through most of the week was a tussle over a piece of hearsay evidence against Rosa and Patrick from a climber, even though the guy could not attend court to give his evidence and be cross-examined because he was on a Royal Marines exercise in the Arctic. With help from defence barristers Patrick and Rosa objected, not least because they had never seen this statement before the trial. After a bizarre running exchange of nautical metaphors between the Judge (a former naval man) and Edwards (“the ship is sinking”; “I feel the icy water around my ankles”; “the pumps were not manned overnight and I am taking to the lifeboat”), the prosecutor gave up and abandoned ship on this one!

Mr Pinder, the engineer co-ordinating the site clearance for the road, started out as a confident witness for the prosecution eg. boldly claiming that all of the Heras fencing at the Decoy Pond eviction was within the Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) land. On this and other points, he slowly gave ground under cross-examination by the defence. At first he conceded that there could have been a small error of perhaps 0.5m regarding the fencing position. Subsequently he was presented with a video screen shot showing the northern fencing line a good 8 – 10 m beyond what Pinder himself had identified as the CPO boundary – a fact that he attempted to wriggle out of, pitifully, with reference to errors of perspective.

Courttoom sketch by Emily Johns: the prosecutor momentarily flummoxed

At “half-time” (actually Wednesday, Day 6 of 8), the defence made submissions of no case to answer which the Judge mulled over, raising hopes briefly, before dismissing them. Nat and Polly gave evidence, both standing up strongly to the prosecutor’s probing.

During Polly’s long cross-examination from the prosecutor, she argued consistently that her tree platform had been her home. The prosecutor then asked her why, if that were the case, following her arrest she had not given her address as “1, The Trees, Decoy Camp”. Quick as a flash Polly answered, “Because it had been destroyed”, leaving the prosecutor momentarily flummoxed.

None of the other defendants gave evidence, and there were no other witnesses, so – in marked contrast to the glacial pace of the prosecution – the defence moved along swiftly.

Friday afternoon saw closing statements from both the Prosecution and the Defence. Self-represented defendants, Rosa and Patrick, went last of all, and seized the opportunity to talk about the real issues: destruction of green spaces, climate change, road-building creating more traffic, the neglect of sustainable transport options, undemocratic decisions, and underlying issues of global injustice.

So at the end of the last trial, all those opposed to the BHLR can be pleased that we literally had the last word. As Rosa said in her closing statement (paraphrasing), “we should be found not guilty because we did more good than harm in standing up against the road”. Yes, it’s as simple as that. Let’s hope justice will be done this time.

The verdicts for trials #4 and #5 will be given at Brighton Magistrates Court on 12 and 18 March respectively. Defendants have been told to appear at 10am. The address is: The Law Courts, Edward Street, BN2 0LG.