Winston Churchill, an avid painter, always said that “audacity” is the key to every artist. If so, Caspar San Giorgi, 39, has a good start on an artistic career in Great Britain. The Palestinian activist, who is reportedly Dutch and also goes by the name of Olax Outis, took a ladder and a box of spray paint in February to deface the famous statue of Churchill in Parliament Square. Despite his admitting to the crime and rejoicing in it, a British jury just found him not guilty in a blatant act of jury nullification.
Churchill also observed that “armed with a paint-box, one cannot be bored.” San Giorgi certainly proved that observation. He used red spray paint to write the messages “Free Palestine”, “Stop the Genocide”, and described Britain’s WWII leader as a “Zionist War Criminal.” He then reportedly boasted in court about causing the £7,000 in damage.
San Giorgi insisted that he is a “citizen of The Hague.” The International Criminal Court located at The Hague has declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal over the war in Gaza.
He said in court that this was a message for Sir Keir Starmer and Parliament: “If I had a larger canvas and more time, I would have written: ‘If Keir Starmer doesn’t come to The Hague, The Hague will come for him.'”
He told the jury that he was not guilty because he used paint that could be washed off and that his protest was “preventing a crime,” not committing a crime.
San Giorgi remained defiant and proud of his conduct:
“Whether you convict me or not is not too much of a concern for me. Whether I get acquitted, deported, imprisoned for years, I can be proud of having spoken about injustice and I have accounted for my actions. I will accept your judgement.”
The jury proceeded to declare him not guilty. It is regrettably a sign of the times in London. Rage has now replaced reason. In June 2020, the statue was vandalized so often that the city encased it in a wooden box. Rather than arresting those seeking to deface it, Churchill was boxed away from public sight.
Now, a jury has decided that it is not a crime to deface public property.
Churchill famously said that “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” I am beginning to see what he meant.
Where are the hooligans when you need them?
Great Britain never seems to learn from history. They fight a war, then settle back into their passivity, while confiscating guns from their citizens, necessitating the Lend/Lease programs they need to survive the next conflict.
Now their armed forces (especially their once-proud navy) are in shambles, and they opened their borders to blatant jihadi anti-Semites who now control most of their government.
If “those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”, Great Britain and most of Europe are indeed poster children for the doomed.
With Jonathan Turley, it’s always a tedious exercise in rage-baiting over reason. For someone who loves to masquerade as an objective legal scholar, his perpetual failure to do basic homework before launching into an inflammatory tirade is genuinely impressive. He’s a lawyer, sure—but he operates like a political hack, tossing aside granular legal realities in favor of cheap, partisan theater.
Take his hysterical framing of the UK jury issue. Turley treats jury nullification (or “jury equity”) as some foundational constitutional right that authoritarian British elites are suddenly stripping away. It’s an adorable American projection, but it’s completely wrong.
In the United Kingdom, jury nullification isn’t a codified right; it’s a structural loophole. It exists purely because of two centuries-old tenets: juries can’t be punished for a verdict a judge dislikes (Bushel’s Case, 1670), and an acquitted defendant can’t be retried. British courts have long barred defense attorneys from ever asking a jury to ignore the law. You cannot “ban” a right that the legal system has never formally recognized. Turley is simply broadcasting his ignorance of British common law by forcing it through an American lens.
Of course, Turley’s selective outrage depends entirely on who is benefiting from a jury’s independent streak. When grand juries “no-billed” charges in record numbers—such as during the heavily politicized Jeanine Pirro-adjacent investigations—government prosecutors similarly came up empty-handed because they had no real case or evidence. Sharp juries saw right through it. Turley, predictably, remained dead silent. He didn’t cry foul when those juries exercised their discretion, proving his “principled” stance is entirely tribal.
The reality of the UK climate cases is far less conspiratorial than Turley pretends. Activists simply exploited a massive statutory loophole in Section 5 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971, which allows a defense of “lawful excuse” if a defendant honestly believed the property owner would have consented to the damage under the circumstances. Because the statute’s wording was incredibly broad and hinged on a purely subjective test, the prosecution faced a near-impossible burden of proof.
Anyone with an internet connection can look up the technicalities of the Act and see why Turley’s narrative falls apart. But as is always the case, Turley routinely leaves out the actual law to ensure the facts don’t get in the way of a good rage-bait.
Spot on, sir. Turley is a fraud on every single claim he makes about English and Scots law. I do, however, look forward to tomorrow’s article on Trump trashing the First Amendment just because three media outlets expose his lies and false claims.
Oh, George, stay off the English AI.
you fool no one, go find another blog that you like more and will tolerate you.
It is not AI. It is plain, simple, legal fact. You perhaps should stay off the NS – Natural Stupidity.
It wasn’t a British jury. It was a jury of leeches, invaders, and turncoats.