Professor Thomas Lewis examines the effect of the Colston Four case
The Court of Appeal has ruled on a charge of criminal damage - where the damage caused is significant, and/or is caused by violence to property, there is no need for the court to engage in a separate analysis of whether a conviction would be in breach of human rights.
The Colston Four
The case – Attorney General’s Reference (No. 1 of 2022) [2022] EWCA Crim 1259 –concerned the trial at Bristol Crown Court of the ‘Colston Four’ who had been acquitted of the criminal damage to a statue of the seventeenth century slave-trader Edward Colston during Black Lives Matter protests in June 2020 – leading some sections of the press and certain politicians to question the ...
