Greenpeace 28 on trial
Judge Mellor began the day by explaining to the jury that his job was to tell them what the law is as is relevant to the case, and to remind the jury of some of the evidence. He said "Your duty as jurors is to come to an honest view as to the facts, and to apply those facts to this law". The judge told the jury that they had been billeted to try a case of more than usual significance, and that the verdict they came to would be widely publicised. He emphasised that issues of right and wrong arguments surrounding GMOs should not have a relationship with verdicts of guilty or not guilty, and that their own beliefs in this case should not be relevant to the verdict they came to.
The two counts of criminal damage and theft were to be considered separately, and Judge Mellor said "There are 28 defendants for you to consider". He added that none of the Greenpeace 28 had tried to "shuffle the blame somewhere else" and that "in a sense they are perhaps proud to stand together". The lawful excuse that the defence maintain arises from the Criminal Damage Act 1975 Sections 5.2 and 5.31 and is referred to as the Statutory Defence.
With regard to the charge of criminal damage, the jury were instructed to bear in mind that they would not be considering any potential effect on wild life or long-term effects on the environment which were out of the scope of the immediate protection as envisaged by the Act. Judge Mellor stated that to fall into the scope of a Statutory Defence, the defendants have to be protecting immediate property from the results of the GM maize flowering. He said "The purpose [should be] to protect that limited category of property within the first strike of pollen". With regard to the first charge of criminal damage, the jury were told that if they were to answer no to any of questions 2, 3 or 4, then the Statutory Defence would not apply and the verdict would be guilty. If all the questions were answered yes, the verdict would be not guilty. With regard to the second charge of theft, the jury were told that if their answer to all the questions was yes, the verdict would be guilty, but that if the answer to any of these was no, the verdict would be one of not guilty.
Judge Mellor emphasised that if the defendants have any previous convictions on other occasions "they do not in any way show guilt".
In the second part of his summing up, Judge Mellor proceeded to remind the jury of the evidence, describing the background of the case, and going through the technical background of the history and methodology of the genetic engineering used in this case as previously described in detail by Chris Holden and others. He said that at one end was the upholding of the view of substantial equivalence which he put as "it looks like maize, it feels like maize, it tastes like maize: it is maize"; and that the other was the "precautionary principle" which he summarised as "if in doubt, don't" and explained that at the core of this position lay the belief that if a living thing that can replicate itself is let loose in the environment, it can never be called back again. He also referred to the notion that the genetic alterations made were invisible "and may take a substantial time to reveal themselves".
The judge then told the jury that Greenpeace adopts all means of campaigning - lobbying, publicity, networking, events "all the way through to direct action" in which the participants (volunteers) are trained in non-violence. He gave a short summary of Greenpeace's campaign against GMOs, referring to the Beanfeast campaign, supermarket tours, and the True Food campaign. He said "Greenpeace sought to do all they could short of direct action to put an end to the farm-scale trials". Judge Mellor then described the agreement accepted by AgrEvo in their planting of farm-scale trial crops, referring to the testimony of Judith Jordan of AgrEvo in which she claimed T-25 maize and ordinary maize were no different from each other. He also reminded the jury that the Scientific Committee that had been set up to oversee the farm-scale trials had not got round to having their first meeting until after the seeds were planted in spring 1999; in fact, the evidence had revealed that the Scientific Committee had not even been set up at this stage.
The judge concluded by telling the jurors that they may have found the defendants to be intelligent, informed, idealistic, decent, and said that if the defendants were right, we should be grateful if they succeeded in their campaign. He suggested that with regard to the charge of theft, the jurors should look at question 3 first (above). The judge sent the jury away, asking them to try and come to a unanimous verdict, telling them that they would be brought back at 4.15pm when they could tell the court whether they needed more time to come to a verdict. At 4.15pm the jury said that they needed more time, and they were told to continue their deliberation in the mrning.
