Jolyon Maugham should be prosecuted for killing a fox

[halocompanach]

Jolyon Maugham QC stating on twitter that he has clubbed to death a fox rather than calling for help to free it from netting in his garden.

The only thing he's clearly done wrong is making a joke about it. But everyone ought to know that there's no law against that, which is why all the harumphing is just a bit much.

That is all probably true, but people (and the twitterverse in particular) aren’t sensible, fact-processing automatons. JM has plenty of experience with this world - he seems to be posting almost constantly, and as the barrister blog above points out, it was unwise in the extreme to tweet about this in the manner that he did.

I suspect he's enjoying the reaction, and I imagine that he would enjoy defending himself if a prosecution was brought.

And why he keeps a baseball bat it his own affair. He doesn't need a reason.

Blimey, there's some odd stuff on this thread.

Incidentally, neither the government guidance, any advice from the RSPCA nor anything on any other website is the law.

Nor does the mere fact that it is government guidance mean that it is an inaccurate statement of the law. No-one on here has cited anything that demonstrates that the guidance is inaccurate.

So if you played cricket, and happened to have cricket gear upstairs in your bedroom and a home invasion happened, you could potentially use your cricket gear to hit the invader. Assuming invader made it upstairs and your scared for your life

However if you instead ran down to the kitchen to grab your biggest knife/baseball bat/cricket bat, then that's premeditation?

Premeditation is utterly irrelevant to the law on self-defence. You are entitled to use reasonable means to defend yourself or others, irrespective of how you do that.

I've just read the blog linked by Jillyhilly. He seems determined to show Maugham in the best light possible. I agree with him on this, though: "the application of the law is far from clear".

When I read about this on Boxing Day, my first thought was to see what the law has to say about killing foxes, and I found the government guidance that I posted earlier. It says "You must only use control methods set out in this guidance." It then lists some illegal methods, and the only legal method mentioned is shooting.

I suspect he's enjoying the reaction

Maybe. But I very much doubt his wife and family are.

Anyway as with all these things I would imagine there’s a strong degree of partisanship in this amongst people who’ve come across him before. If you like the guy and see him as an antiBrexit hero, you’ll support his right to do what he wants with his baseball bat. If you don’t, you’ll be enjoying the schaudenfreude.

The RSPCA guidance quoted above requires the fox to be killed in those circumstances.

Now that we've clarified that you're talking about the government guidance I linked to, you seem to have misread or misinterpreted what it says. It doesn't say that you should kill a fox which has accidentally become entangled in the netting you used in an inadequate attempt to protect your chickens.

This "guidance" is really no guide as to whether he can be prosecuted.

That blog is informative, but the tl:dr is simply "prosecuting him is a waste of time".

The only methods of killing foxes that are forbidden in the guidance are gassing, poisoning, and blocking or destroying fox earths if they are occupied

When you've just battered a living creature to death you feel quite shocked by it no matter the reason. The only thing 'new' about this experience is the availability of SM to describe it.

This is the primary medium that Jolyon has used to primarily further his main interests - and in his 'shock' at his own primeval behaviour he unthinkingly turned straight to SM to desribe it..

Whilst I'm a bit meh about it - I do find the responses to it rather interesting.

Thoroughly unpleasant scenario. I certainly wouldn’t free the fox. I imagine it would be panicky and bitey, and if you just set it free, it will come back for the chickens, and get into them eventually. If there were no better means to hand, I guess the baseball bat will do the job, hopefully in one blow. A nasty thought to the outside observer, and not at all nice, but in all likelihood the fox, if not dead, would have been unconscious after the first blow. Believe me, I hate the idea of animals suffering, but that also includes chickens. I imagine his chickens were applauding him as much as their feathery wings could! Not the sort of thing to boast about though. The guy does sound like a git.

'If you just set it free, it will come back for the chickens, and get into them eventually.'

But that's why part of being a responsible chicken owner if you live somewhere with a lot of foxes (eg London) is having a fox proof coop and run.
If you kill this one there'll be another and another, so no matter how handy you are with a baseball bat killing the foxes that come rather than securing your birds properly is never going to be the high welfare option.

Guardian very unhappy with Jolyon.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/28/jolyon-maugham-qc-was-a-hero-to-many-then-he-beat-a-fox-to-death

in his 'shock' at his own primeval behaviour he unthinkingly turned straight to SM to desribe it..

That sums up perfectly why this story is so weird and disturbing. For most normal people with reasonable amounts of empathy, the thought of beating an animal to death with a bat is so completely abhorrent that you can’t even imagine the distressed state you’d be in afterwards. So then you try to imagine beating the animal, coming back into the kitchen, pouring yourself a cup of coffee, sitting down at the kitchen table - and deciding to telling your 175,000 twitter followers about it in a kind of jokey way, including the detail about the silk kimono and your hangover. For most of us, it just doesn’t compute.

The three day break from his incessant whining on Twitter about how awful women are is however refreshing.

I’m sort of intrigued to see his attempt at a comeback though.

Blimey, he's gone from being a vile misogynist to a cute-furry-animal murderer to a grim exhibitionist pervert in the course of an evening

He's nothing if not versatile.

Wonder how the getting fox brain out a silk kimono is going, though?

I have for a long while thought all is not right upstairs with JMQC. But these are the actions of a total, manic fruitloop.

I used to think anyone who hired him must be one card short of a full deck, but can you possibly imagine what it's like to be married to him?

I'd run for the hills.

For most normal people with reasonable amounts of empathy, the thought of beating an animal to death with a bat is so completely abhorrent that you can’t even imagine the distressed state you’d be in afterwards.

Actually I think there's a fair bit of space between this and taking a sadistic pleasure in the act.

I would suggest that a person who thinks this is the only normal reaction probably thinks of animals like pets. The thought of killing my pet cat makes me shiver.

However, another entirely normal reaction is that putting an injured animal swiftly out of its misery is an unpleasant but necessary task when the alternative is waiting hours for the authorities to turn up while it writhes in agony, or while he googles some "guidance". He chose what he thought would minimise the fox's suffering and that's why he is innocent of any crime.

I would like to say that telling the world about it isn't normal, but people share all sorts of inappropriate things on social media, me included.

Here is Simon from Wildlife Aid showing how to rescue a fox from an entanglement in a suburban garden. No baseball bats or killing required.

while it writhes in agony, or while he googles some "guidance"
Not in any tweet has he even intimated the fox was at all injured. Only trapped.
No idea if he was shocked or not, but I still think that braining a fox, being covered in blood (I seriously doubt one blow, I seriously doubt the fox didnt struggle somewhat) and hungover, the first thing I would do is tweet about it. In a jokey way too.
He is unhinged if he thinks 10 minutes googling or even just calling his own vet (he must have one for the chickens) is going to make this whole situation worse. How does he know how long the fox has been trapped already.

He chose what he thought would minimise the fox's suffering and that's why he is innocent of any crime

Surely the investigation is what will determine whether he’s innocent of any crime?

He chose what he thought would minimise the fox's suffering and that's why he is innocent of any crime

Good grief, isn't that the same explanation given of nutjobs who murder their family?

I fail to see how anyone with all their lights on/a decent, normal human being can see a fox cornered in a pen and think, do you know what, I'll just go and get a baseball bat, cause this animal who is not threatening me at all, and isn't threatening my chickens any more, unbelievable suffering and pain and smash its head in until I've killed it.

isn't that the same explanation given of nutjobs who murder their family?

No