Last week the “TwitterJokeTrial” appeal (where I am solicitor for the appellant) had its second hearing at the High Court.
The appeal received wide coverage on mainstream and social media – the former mainly because Stephen Fry and Al Murray kindly offered to walk with Paul Chambers into the Royal Courts of Justice and sit with him at the hearing.
Below are the key links to coverage of the case. Judgment is reserved and may be a few weeks.
Let me know if there are any other links which should be added.
I previewed the hearing at New Statesman and on a Without Prejudice podcast with “Charon QC”.
There was a great preview post on the appeal at Heresy Corner entitled the “Turing Joke Test”.
Many TV channels did a piece on the hearing; but perhaps the best was this one by Al Jazeera.
Sky News arranged an interview from outside the Royal Courts of Justice with Al Murray.
Paul’s barrister John Cooper QC and I did a podcast with Carl Gardner after the hearing.
Nick Cohen, the journalist who (rightly) sees the case as about the fundamental right to free speech, sat in at the appeal. His account of the hearing is at the Spectator.
The blogger “Flayman” has been campaigning on the case since the start, and this is his detailed account of attending the hearing.
The free speech organisation Article 19 made a brilliant written submission which you can read in full here (pdf)
I did a post for The Lawyer on the legal problems of applying the 2003 offence (based on bilateral telephony) to post-2003 complex social networks.
Al Murray did an excellent article at the Sunday Times (£) following the hearing.
Google News currently lists 354 news articles on the appeal. A particularly good piece is at the Irish Times.
And finally…this is Paul pwning Edwina Currie on Twitter about the case.
7 Responses to TwitterJokeTrial appeal – round-up of key links
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Praise indeed for the legal team on this brilliant result and for Paul’s drive in persevering with what must have at time seemed a gargantuan battle. In an age of barren and sterile officialdom, which sometimes collectively resembles HL Mencken’s puritan (which you mention), we not only have lawyers willing to fight this to the bitter end, we also still have judges with good old fashioned horse sense. As a forensic linguist who has had to give expert evidence on meaning in several courts over the years, including the Central Criminal Court, it is clear that this was never a threat, just based on the context and the use of language, let alone the main legal grounds you fought it on.
John Olsson LLB (Hons) PhD
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