Barrister’s powerful speech at Filton Trial reminds jury of its right to defy judge
"Mr Menon is the barrister representing Charlotte Head, who, like four of the others, is charged with three offences: aggravated burglary, criminal damage and violent disorder.
In his speech, he carefully unravels the prosecution’s – and, of course, the government’s – charge that the break-in was aggravated burglary. As Menon points out, for that to be true, Head and the others would have had to have harboured an intention to use the sledgehammers to hurt the guards when they broke into the factory. There is precisely no evidence that that was the case.
He also dismisses the claim of violent disorder against Head. For that to be true, she would have needed to have actively colluded with the others in using or threatening violence – violence that was not in self-defence or to defend someone else. This charge usually applies in circumstances such as pub brawls or football match fights. The test is whether a hypothetical “bystander of reasonable firmness” – someone uninvolved – would feel their safety was in danger from the fracas.
Again, Menon makes a compelling case that at no point was this true of Head, and suggests that the reason the video footage of the confrontation between the activists and the security guards looks so threatening is largely because one of the guards menaced the women, and twice assaulted an unarmed male activist, Jordan Devlin, with a sledgehammer.
But the most astonishing part of his speech relates to the third charge: criminal damage. The defendants have only one available defence against this. In legal parlance, it is called “lawful excuse”. It means that any criminal damage they caused can be viewed as lawful because it was designed to prevent the commission of a far graver crime – in this case genocide.
At one point in the trial a jury member sent a note to the judge, Mr Justice Johnson, asking this very question: “If we decide that they [the defendants] genuinely believe that they were performing life-saving action and were morally compelled to destroy weapons they believed were going to be used to kill civilians in what they believe to be an illegal genocide, would that amount to a lawful excuse?”
The judge, who repeatedly stifled efforts by the defence to air evidence of Elbit System’s involvement in the genocide, answered that the jury must not take into account such “lawful excuse”. In his words: “There is no evidence in this case of anything that is capable in law of amounting to a lawful excuse, so that is not something that you need to consider.”
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2026-01-14/filton-trial-jury-defy-judge/
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"Mr Menon is the barrister representing Charlotte Head, who, like four of the others, is charged with three offences: aggravated burglary, criminal damage and violent disorder.
In his speech, he carefully unravels the prosecution’s – and, of course, the government’s – charge that the break-in was aggravated burglary. As Menon points out, for that to be true, Head and the others would have had to have harboured an intention to use the sledgehammers to hurt the guards when they broke into the factory. There is precisely no evidence that that was the case.
He also dismisses the claim of violent disorder against Head. For that to be true, she would have needed to have actively colluded with the others in using or threatening violence – violence that was not in self-defence or to defend someone else. This charge usually applies in circumstances such as pub brawls or football match fights. The test is whether a hypothetical “bystander of reasonable firmness” – someone uninvolved – would feel their safety was in danger from the fracas.
Again, Menon makes a compelling case that at no point was this true of Head, and suggests that the reason the video footage of the confrontation between the activists and the security guards looks so threatening is largely because one of the guards menaced the women, and twice assaulted an unarmed male activist, Jordan Devlin, with a sledgehammer.
But the most astonishing part of his speech relates to the third charge: criminal damage. The defendants have only one available defence against this. In legal parlance, it is called “lawful excuse”. It means that any criminal damage they caused can be viewed as lawful because it was designed to prevent the commission of a far graver crime – in this case genocide.
At one point in the trial a jury member sent a note to the judge, Mr Justice Johnson, asking this very question: “If we decide that they [the defendants] genuinely believe that they were performing life-saving action and were morally compelled to destroy weapons they believed were going to be used to kill civilians in what they believe to be an illegal genocide, would that amount to a lawful excuse?”
The judge, who repeatedly stifled efforts by the defence to air evidence of Elbit System’s involvement in the genocide, answered that the jury must not take into account such “lawful excuse”. In his words: “There is no evidence in this case of anything that is capable in law of amounting to a lawful excuse, so that is not something that you need to consider.”
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2026-01-14/filton-trial-jury-defy-judge/
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Barrister’s powerful speech at Filton Trial reminds jury of its right to defy judge
Starmer and the media need convictions to justify Palestine Action’s proscription as a terrorist group. Rajiv Menon KC spells out to the jury why it is a vital last defence against government tyranny.
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