The Daily Mail has an interesting article on the prosecution of a documentary film maker. He was filming squatters for film who had entered an empty house through an open window. When the burgalar alarm went off, the squatters left but the film maker–Mr Mark Guard–stayed behind to turn off the alarm.
When the police arrived–all nine of them in three cars–he admitted he’d turned the lights on to turn the burglar alarm off. They then arrested him for suspected theft of electricity.
This is something of a malicious prosecution: a charge of entering the property would not stick as he had not broken any law but a charge of theft–regardless of the amount–would stick.
Interesting, at the first hearing for the charge, Mr Guard elected for a trial in a crown court before a jury of his peers as is his right under the law. The case was quickly dropped. You will remember a similar case where a teenager was taken to court because a toddler threw a sweet wrapper out of her car’s window. She too elected for trial by jury. We can but hope for the day when one of these silly prosecutions ends up in court before a jury and that jury has the good sense to exercise its right to jury equity.
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