Aggravated trespass - protestors entering field and attaching themselves to tractors engaged in sowing genetically modified maize - belief that seeds harmful to property no defence

Director of Public Prosecutions v Bayer and Others: QBD (Lord Justice Brooke and Mr Justice Silber): 4 November 2003

The defendants were charged with attaching themselves to a tractor engaged in the lawful activity of planting maize seeds in a plantation with the intention of disrupting that activity contrary to section 68(1) of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.

The district judge found that they had genuine beliefs about the dangers of genetically modified (GM) crops and that therefore their actions were reasonable in all the circumstances and had a defence under common law for the defence of property.

The DPP appealed by way of case stated.

Francis Chamberlain (instructed by the Crown Prosecution Service, Dorset) for the director; Nerida Harford-Bell and Anya Lewis (instructed by Bindman & Partners) for the first, second and fourth defendant.

The third defendant in person.

Held, allowing the appeal, that where the common law defence of private defence or protective defence was raised, a court should ask itself whether the defendants were contending that they used reasonable force in order to defend property from actual or imminent damage which constituted or would constitute an unlawful or criminal act; that if the answer was 'yes' the court had to go on to consider the facts as the defendants honestly believed them to be, and to determine objectively whether the force used was no more than was reasonable in all the circumstances, given their belief; that it was clear that the defendants knew quite well that there was nothing unlawful about the drilling of GM seeds; and that therefore the defence was not available to the defendants and the case would remitted to the district judge with a direction to convict.