FORMER English Defence League (EDL) leader Tommy Robinson, serving a 13-month jail term for contempt of court, faces a wait to find out if he has succeeded in challenges against conviction and sentence.
Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett announced at the end of Court of Appeal proceedings in London yesterday that the court would try its “level best” to give a decision by the end of July.
Robinson, 35, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, watched via video link from prison. During the hearing, his QC Jeremy Dein urged Lord Burnett and two other judges to overturn contempt of court findings, submitting that procedural “deficiencies” had given rise to “prejudice”.
Mr Dein, when asking the judges to reduce the jail sentence, argued that it was “manifestly excessive”, and said that “insufficient weight” had been given to personal mitigation.
Robinson was jailed in May after he filmed people involved in a criminal trial and broadcast the footage on social media.
The footage, lasting around an hour, was watched 250,000 times within hours of being posted on Facebook. The far-right activist was given 10 months for contempt of court, which he admitted, and a further three months for breaching a previous suspended sentence.
Robinson was detained outside Leeds Crown Court after using social media to broadcast details of a trial that was subject to blanket reporting restrictions.
Jailing him, Judge Geoffrey Marson told Robinson his actions could have caused the trial to be re-run, costing “hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds”.
The judge said it was a “serious aggravating feature” that he was encouraging others to share it and it had been shared widely. He added: “I am not sure you appreciate the potential consequence of what you have done.
“People have to understand that if they breach court orders there will be very real consequences.”
Robinson had narrowly avoided jail in May 2017 over footage he filmed during the trial of four men who were later convicted of gang-raping a teenage girl.
The judge on that occasion gave him a three-month suspended sentence and told him his punishment was not about “freedom of speech or freedom of the press” but about “justice and ensuring that a trial can be carried out justly and fairly”.
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