Owen Greenhall of the Garden Court Protest Team successfully acted for the defendant, instructed by Hester Cavaciuti and Lodovica Degan of Bindmans LLP.
A protestor was unanimously found not guilty by a jury at Southwark Crown Court in a trial arising from the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in London in June 2020.
The defendant was a long-standing campaigner on racial justice issues who had attended the demonstration following the murder of George Floyd to campaign for police accountability. He became caught up in disorder after he sought to challenge officers making a seemingly unwarranted arrest of a young male.
At trial, he faced three counts of Violent Disorder. He relied on defences of self-defence and defence of another as a response to apparently excessive force used by police towards demonstrators. A submission of no case to answer was upheld in relation to one count, he was unanimously acquitted of the remaining two counts by the jury.
The demonstration attracted national news coverage, including in the BBC and the Guardian.
