‘Regina vs Zoe Cohen’ – from arrest to trial for non-violent civil disobedience

There is so much I could write about the experience of arrest, plea hearing and trail – some of which I may publish elsewhere, but for now I am sharing the bare facts of the matter.

My intention in sharing this is not to garner sympathy, but to provide information to a wider public. It has become clear to me in the p...ast weeks and months that most people I come into contact with have very little knowledge and awareness of what happens if one is arrested, for the sorts of non-violent civil disobedience Extinction Rebellion members carry out, and the resulting consequences.

I have had all sorts of responses from people I know or talk to – from the jokey “oh no, you’ve not gone and got yourself arrested again have you!”, to the naive “oh, I thought they just arrest people and then let them go”, to the dramatic “oh I’m glad you’re not in prison”. These comments indicate that some people think it’s no big deal, whilst others are convinced we can get custodial sentences for peacefully sitting in a road.

So, I am writing this to shine some light on the reality and also to describe the kind of personal sacrifices XR members are prepared to make. I would add very clearly here, that anything I may describe here is absolutely nothing in comparison with what those particularly in the global South, already affected by climate and ecological breakdown through droughts, crop failures, hurricanes and much more, experience – and of course nothing compared with what is to come for us all if we don’t have fundamental system shifts very soon.

I was arrested on 17th April for peacefully sitting on a road blocking the traffic coming in and out of Parliament Square in London as part of the Rebellion. I was arrested at 6:30pm in the evening and then held in police custody until 7:30am the next morning. For part of this time I was locked in a cell, on my own, in a London police station, having had my photographs taken, plus my finger prints and DNA. I was then released ‘pending investigation’, because there were so many arrests that the police were unable to interview and charge us all at the time. The process was stressful, emotional and exhausting – I was brought up to be a ‘good girl’, and so deciding to intentionally go against all the societal norms you’ve lived within for 49 years and actually get arrested is an intense experience.

Nearly three months later I received a letter from the Met Police saying I was being charged with disobeying a ‘Section 14’ of the Public Order Act – this is where the Police decide that a protest is causing ‘significant disruption’ or other issues and that protestors have to move away from a designated area. I didn’t move when asked and therefore I was arrested.

I was required to attend the City of London Magistrates Court on 2nd August at 9:30am for my Plea Hearing. This is the process by which you are brought into the court, in front of the Judge or Magistrate and asked if you are pleading Guilty or Not Guilty. There are various pros and cons to this choice which I won’t go into here, but I chose to plead ‘Not Guilty’. This was not because I denied not moving off the road and therefore disobeying the Section 14, but because I had no choice but to do this out of necessity for the current and future harm and loss of life as a result of Government inaction on the climate and ecological crisis. If you plead ‘Not Guilty’ you then have to set a date for trial when you have to come back to Court.

Of course, all these processes involve days off work, travel costs and lost time (I live a long way from London).

My trial date was set for 22nd October and was scheduled to take 2.5 hours – in fact it took nearly 9 hours! And I wasn’t able to leave the Court til nearly 7pm, that’s why the photo of me outside is nearly dark. It was a long, exhausting and emotional day, at the end of which the two Magistrates as predicted, found me ‘Guilty’.

This means I now have a criminal record (an ‘unspent’ conviction which then becomes in time a ‘spent’ conviction), a conditional discharge for 9 months, and have to pay Court costs of ￡795 – all for trying to prevent further ecocide and mass death, and to give my daughter a better chance of a long term future. This type of conviction can have consequences for employment for some people, as well as implications for things like getting a mortgage or certain types of insurance. You can also have travel restrictions in terms of going to some countries, like the US.

In addition to the Court costs, and train fares etc, I will also need to pay my solicitor’s fees and barrister’s fees for representing me in court in the trial – I self-represented at the Plea Hearing but didn’t feel confident enough to do this at the trial.

And it’s worth saying here that the ‘system’ ie, the Met and Crown Prosecution Service is choosing to prosecute the majority of the 1200 of us who were arrested in April.

Towards the end of the trial the Crown Prosecutor, ie the lawyer acting for the Crown, said “This is not a court of morals, this is a court of law”… I think that summarises it well