Do you remember the Ponting case? In 1985, Clive Ponting, a senior MoD civil servant, was prosecuted for leaking to the Labour MP Tam Dalyell classified documents about the sinking of the General Belgrano during the Falklands War. Ponting did not deny his actions but argued they were in the public interest. The judge in the case asserted that “the public interest is what the government of the day says it is” and virtually directed the jury to convict. They stunned the establishment and acquitted him instead.
This ability of a jury to apply the principle of jury equity, or “the Right of Juries to give their Verdict according to their Convictions”, as a plaque inside the Old Bailey puts it, is supremely exasperating to governments and to authoritarians of all kinds. That’s why it is vital. It is an essential way of allowing us, the people, to express our own view of justice and the public interest when someone’s liberty is at stake.
