Drax protest convictions quashed following undercover officer revelations
Twenty nine protesters convicted after a freight train was boarded at Drax Power Station have had their convictions quashed at the Court of Appeal.
District
The case was overturned by a panel of three judges following revelations that the original case included undisclosed information that had been gathered by an undercover police officer.
In quashing the earlier conviction, the judges ruled that failure of the police to disclose that the officer was working undercover undermined the safety of the conviction.
Mark Kennedy, the undercover officer involved, had hired a van and transported activists to the site. Failure to disclose this information could have had a fundamental difference to the case of the defence.
Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas, who was amongst the judges who decided upon to the outcome of the case said, "There was a complete and total failure, for reasons which remain unclear, to make a disclosure fundamental to the defence.
"In those circumstances, this court has no alternative but to quash the convictions."
Originally found guilty of obstructing engines or carriages on railways, the 29 were sentenced at Leeds Crown Court in 2009 and 2010.
Participants had occupied the train and track for 16 hours, causing significant delays to that part of the rail network.
During the protest, coal was removed from the freight hopper and deposited on to the track to stop the train moving. Work to clean the railway after the protest cost Network Rail in the region of £37,000.
Sentences handed down at the time included conditional discharges and unpaid work orders of up to 60 hours.