Scottow conviction overturned on appeal.

[marvellousnightforamooncup]

Whoop!

Just seen her tweet.

Yes a spent conviction remains in the public interest.....it normally takes 10 crime free years for an adult conviction to be declared 'spent'

@DannyGlickWindowTapping

I did like the clarification from Barrister Adrian Yalland, that this means that the conviction is struck from the record, and does not exist, unlike any spent convictions, which will always remain on record. I believe that the other "recent case" referenced may have been to deny an injunction against disclosing of spent convictions. But I could be wrong.

Oh, of COURSE! Enjoyed the tweet, didn't clock the reasoning.

Can someone with a 'spent conviction' for violent criminal acts (including criminal sexual acts) ever practice law as a solicitor, barrister or judge etc in the UK?

Excellent news & v pleased for Kate. Enjoy the celebrations!

Penguin that made me chortle as well 😂

Good news

From the bits I read it seems she was trolling this person, was asked to stop by the police and then commented on a statement made by them?

Whether something is harassment has to be judged in context. I don't think (from what I can tell) that Kate Scottow was wise or kind but the complainant (Steph Hayden) was at least equally obnoxious and has done far worse.

Arguing with idiots on twitter shouldn't be criminal.

This is good news. It was difficult to see how it amounted to harassment and it would be very worrying times if being nasty of itself could constitute a criminal offence.

Arguing with idiots on twitter shouldn't be criminal.

We’d need a heckuva lot more cops if it was!

We’d need a heckuva lot more cops if it was!

Depends- it's about allocating your resources carefully.

West Yorkshire have just decided to prioritise thoughtcrime and ignore all the unimportant 'traditional' crime.

It will be interesting to see if Twitter tightens up its policy on what is acceptable if/when the US does remove the protection (to providers) of Section 230. I seem to remember several tweets to JKR were gloating that they could not be sued for libel etc.. because of it. Maybe it will mean that fewer people are goaded into retaliatory tweets, and the risk of legal action from serial litigants is reduced. Fingers crossed.

..... Serial litigants and police forces who apparently have plenty of capacity to pursue people for non-criminal thoughts.

@Campervan69

This is the blue tick actor although I have no idea who he is.

He said "transphobes" not "terfs". I don't think it does GC people any favours to jump all over anyone who speaks against transphobia: it creates an association.

I don't think it does GC people any favours to jump all over anyone who speaks against transphobia: it creates an association.

I agree in principle but he was clearly encouraging abuse of women.

The thing with sect 230 - as I understand it - is you can still be sued for what you say online (which is why you VPN/Tor on KF; difficult to sue someone you can’t identify and the site owner can’t either, but neither are they liable for it, whether the poster can be ID’d or not). Obviously losing this legal defence opens up the owner of KF to massive liability given the content on his site and the litigious nature of its subjects.

He’s also been making noises for a while now about wanting to prioritise himself/family rather than facilitating laughing at eccentrics online, which is understandable.

It’ll be bad news for the internet in general if it happens as so many sites are hosted in the US (opinions seem to vary how likely, might be being alarmist but more smarterer tech/US politics people say it’s going to happen). People are predicting FB and Twitter seriously clamping down on anything controversial on their platforms, so yes, it could well shut down a lot of the slapfights on Twitter that keep ending up in court.

In the meantime, perhaps we all need to get conversant with how to safely use the deep web; it might be the only place we can have a conversation in the near future.

@donquixotedelamancha

I don't think it does GC people any favours to jump all over anyone who speaks against transphobia: it creates an association.

I agree in principle but he was clearly encouraging abuse of women.

Well feck him if he was. I just didn't see it i the screenshots posted.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9041725/Mum-called-trans-woman-Twitter-CLEARED-wrongdoing.html

The newspapers don't seem to have any problems quoting the insult, do they?

@PopperUppleton

The newspapers don't seem to have any problems quoting the insult, do they?

It would’ve been a tabloid headline 15-20 years ago. They love a rhyme!

"The activist, who began medically transitioning in 2007 and was given a gender recognition certificate in 2018, won a landmark case at the High Court in April last year when website Mumsnet was forced to reveal the identity of an anonymous user who had been accused of bullying her online."

IIRC the anonymous user had used a throwaway email and obviously fictional address. So did anything come of that?
(Apart from many users deleting their accounts and registering with a name change and more secure email etc).

The activist, who began medically transitioning in 2007

I'm not sure this is true. There is that infamous video of SH having a go at a man on a recption desk (can't remember where), which was more recent than 2007 and they didn't appear to be trans in any way then...

@SunsetBeetch

The activist, who began medically transitioning in 2007

I'm not sure this is true. There is that infamous video of SH having a go at a man on a recption desk (can't remember where), which was more recent than 2007 and they didn't appear to be trans in any way then...

Clearly SH wasn’t socially transitioned ‘full time’ until much later than 2007, as court documents in the public record make clear.

————————

The following is just a general thought and not intended to refer to any particular individual.

‘Medical transition’ can refer to taking hormones whilst still presenting as one’s birth sex (the NHS doesn’t enable this but private prescriptions and grey/black market hormones exist).

I suppose even taking hormones for a month or two and then ceasing for a long period before restarting could feasibly be referred to as ‘beginning medical transition’?

@Signalbox

Is the High Court precedent setting? Hopefully this will save others from prosecution for unkindness.

The simple answer to your question is yes, but there is something that is quite confusing about this.

The original conviction was at a magistrate's court.

The normal route to appealing a magistrate's court decision is to go to the crown court but you can also go straight to the high court for a decision "by way of case stated" which is where you're simply appealing that the magistrate got the law wrong.

However, there is a quote included in the Daily Mail article linked to earlier where some one from the CPS is quoted as saying:-

A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service said: 'Following today's Court of Appeal decision in relation to the conviction of Katherine Scottow, we await the judgment which we will consider carefully in due course.'

(emphasis added)

If the quote is correct that is a bit odd as you don't just jump from the magistrates court straight to the court of appeal.

There is a means by which you can get to the court of appeal though. That is to first appeal to the crown court and from there (if still not successful) then appeal to the court of appeal.

It seems as though she may have had an unsuccessful appeal to the crown court which she then took to the court of appeal where she was successful.

It all depends what was said in the judgment but a court of appeal judgment is binding on all lower courts unless a specific case can be distinguished as being different in some concrete way from this case.

Great news for Kate, hope she can get her career back on track. Forensic psychology, yes? I don't know why but it seems apt!