Press release, for immediate release

JURY REFUSE TO CONVICT MEDICS WHO BROKE WINDOWS AT JP MORGAN, DESPITE JUDGE REMOVING ALL LEGAL DEFENCES

 Dr Alice Clack, Maggie Faye, Dr Juliette Brown, Dr David McKelvey, Ali Rowe, Dr Patrick Hart.

• Jury refuse to convict six medics, who broke windows at JP Morgan in July 2022, causing an alleged c. £200K worth of damage
• Medics argued their action was an urgent and critical intervention, given the vast scale of JP Morgan’s investment in fossil fuels, which is causing catastrophic and irreversible harm to life and public health
• On the last working day before the trial began, Judge Gerard Pounder removed all legal defences from the medics.
• The outcome runs counter to GMC’s position that doctors taking direct action undermine public trust in the profession
• Prosecution plans retrial, due to be heard in February 2026

Verdict instructive for General Medical Council (GMC)

A jury at Snaresbrook Crown Court has resisted a judge’s invitation to convict six medical professionals, charged with ‘criminal damage’, after they broke windows at JP Morgan in July 2022, on the eve of the UK’s record-breaking heatwave, which claimed thousands of lives. Despite more than 2 days of deliberations and the judge’s direction that they had no legal defence, the jury were unable to agree on a verdict. Just before lunch on Friday, the jury asked the judge whether a medical emergency could be a lawful excuse, by inference rejecting the prosecutor’s position that the action concerned not objective reality, but ‘political opinion and belief’. The judge told them that in this case it was no defence.

The outcome casts further doubt on the GMC’s position that doctors who take direct action to protect the public from climate breakdown undermine public trust in the profession. It was on this basis that the GMC suspended Dr Sarah Benn from practice in April, after she held a sign saying ‘Stop New Oil’, in breach of an injunction obtained by Valero, the US-based fossil fuels company.

Speaking after the verdict, Dr Alice Clack said:

“It’s hard to express what we’re all feeling right now. We’re grateful to the jury for bringing moral sense and humanity into the courtroom. Their deliberations can’t have been easy given the directions of the judge. The outcome doesn’t bring back the countless lives already lost to JP Morgan’s fossil fuel addiction, in this country and around the world. But it gives an indication of the public support for medical practitioners willing to put their bodies on the line. The climate crisis is a health crisis. We can’t protect our patients by treating the symptoms, and we won’t stand by while JP Morgan and others cover up the truth and pour petrol on the flames of the climate crisis. It’s our duty as evidence-based professionals to take proportionate and effective action to protect public health. Today the jury, by refusing the judge’s invitation to find us guilty, has sent a powerful message to the GMC that public trust in the medical profession is not eroded by their engagement in civil disobedience.  

Dr Fiona Godlee FRCP FAcMedSci, former Editor in Chief of The British Medical Journal, said:

"None of these experienced and dedicated doctors and nurses wanted to be up in court on these charges. They wanted to be treating patients and protecting the public as they have sworn to do. But the world is facing an existential climate emergency that threatens our very survival, and our government and corporations like JP Morgan are completely failing us by continuing the madness of investing in fossil fuels. In view of this, I fully understand why these doctors and nurses felt the need to act as they did and I thank them for their leadership and courage."

Action taken ahead of 40˚C heatwave in 2022, which claimed thousands of lives

On 17 July 2022, the group of six medical professionals (two consultants, two GPs and two nurses) knew what was coming. The UK’s record heatwave, that would cause thousands of deaths across the country, in particular among the young, elderly and the vulnerable, most in need of medical care. 19 July 2022 remains the hottest recorded day in UK history, with the mercury hitting  40.3˚C in Coningsby, Lincolnshire.

At 8am that day, Dr Juliette Brown, a consultant psychiatrist, Maggie Fay, a Dementia Specialist Nurse, Dr David McKelvey, a GP, Dr Alice Clack, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, Dr Patrick Hart, a GP, and Ali Rowe, a child and adolescent mental health specialist and former mental health nurse, carefully cracked a number of panes of glass at JP Morgan’s offices in Canary Wharf and put up posters which read “IN CASE OF MEDICAL CLIMATE EMERGENCY BREAK GLASS”.

At the time of their action, JP Morgan, the leading financier of the global fossil fuel industry, had poured $384.2bn into the sector since the Paris Agreement on Climate Change called for an urgent reduction of carbon emissions. This despite JP Morgan themselves producing a report, leaked to the press in 2020, warning that climate change was a threat to the survival of the human race. The report also stated: “The human cost of climate change will play out through worsening health outcomes”.

Do the ends justify the means?

Towards the end of the trial, James Bruce, the barrister for the prosecution, challenged Dr Patrick Hart in cross-examination by asking “Is your position that the ends justify the means?”.

Dr Hart replied, “If by ends, you mean preventing the collapse of civilisation and entire ecosystems and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, and by means, cracking a few panes of glass, then yes, I would say the ends justify the means”.   

Arguing along similar lines, Dr Juliette Brown explained in evidence: “Non Violent Direct Action is the most effective way of bringing about change. If you are a member of a union, a woman who votes in elections, or a working man who has the right to vote, or you are sitting on a jury, someone fought for that right and we take that for granted until we lose those rights …  It’s a matter of conscience for me. Knowing what I know, it would be wrong not to do as much as I can. I took an oath to protect life and I have a duty to act and treat this as the emergency that it is.”

Personal testimony

All six health professionals provided compelling evidence for the need to take action.

Maggie Fay told the court:  “As a nurse I have seen many many people die, I have been alongside them, but they are dying at a time which is their time, when you factor in a warming world with heat, people are dying when it isn’t their time… so as a nurse that was why I was at JPM, it was a medical intervention to prevent death and suffering.”

Dr Alice Clack said: “I’m a medical professional, and as Maggie said yesterday, we have a professional obligation to act based on the evidence, so I have a professional responsibility to act on the climate crisis… I also feel, I’m 48, I’ve watched the climate crisis unfold my whole life, and I just feel a responsibility to younger people, many of which have worked out what is going on, and I don’t think it should be left to them, so I just feel I have a responsibility to them”.

Dr David McKelvey said: “I pray that the cracking of a single pane of glass in this mighty tower of glass will allow light to get into the corridors of power… My code of conduct is primarily to save life; embody that Jesus principle, the higher calling of serving life in all its fullness, and I believe that is embodied in the General Medical Council code, which basically is the same as the Hippocratic oath.”

Ali Rowe said: “How do you talk to parents and children? These aren’t easy questions. It’s not easy to have a conversation with a child, when they ask, ‘will I die before I get old?’ … what is happening now is a form of child abuse and betrayal that we have yet to develop the language for.”

Dr Juliette Brown said: “On that Sunday, I was there to join the dots, between the harm done to my patients, their bodies and minds, the unprecedented heatwave, JP Morgan, the arch financier of fossil fuels, pouring petrol on the flames. Honestly, in my mind, there may as well have been a patient or child on the other side of that glass who needed our help, because that’s what I see when I see those buildings.”

Dr Patrick Hart said: “The UK government is making the crisis worse and doing so knowingly. The people whose job it is to protect us are failing their greatest duty. At the same time we see more publication of leaked information about the effort of the fossil fuel industry to cover up the risk …  What am I left with? A Level 4 heat warning, over 40 degrees. I, like my colleagues, have to follow a Code of Conduct. As a doctor it is my duty to act when the health of patients is at risk. We’ve never seen so much danger to their health as now. As I approached the glass tower, six thousand panes of glass already shining in the hot July morning, I knew in my heart that what I was doing was the right thing. It was the best thing I could be doing to help my patients.”

Growing number of health professionals arrested

More than 130 health professionals have been arrested for climate protest in the last few years. Information published by the British Government on climate change and health in May 2022, which quotes from The Lancet, the leading medical journal, helps explain why so many are ready to risk their livelihoods for the public:

“The science is unequivocal; a global increase of 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse.” (underlining added)

As the International Energy Agency and others have made clear, the new fossil fuel developments being supported by the banking sector in general, and JP Morgan in particular, are inconsistent with keeping warming under 1.5˚C. Medical professionals who understand the catastrophic consequences feel duty-bound to take proportionate action to protect life and public health.

In 2019, Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, the leading medical journal, called on all medical practitioners to take direct action:

‘All health professionals have a duty and obligation to engage in all kinds of non-violent social protest to address the climate emergency’ because it represents ‘the most existential crisis facing our communities in the world today’.

In September 2022, the World Health Organisation joined calls for a binding treaty to end what it referred to as the ‘self sabotage’ of addiction to fossil fuels, before prioritising in May 2024 the escalating climate change impacts on health in its next programme of work.

The British Medical Journal has reported that air pollution from fossil fuels is causing more than 5 million deaths a year. Rising temperatures are now driving the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue fever, into Europe.

Solidarity from across profession following suspension of Dr Sarah Benn

In April 2024, a disciplinary tribunal convened by the General Medical Council (‘GMC’), the regulator for medical doctors, suspended Dr Sarah Benn for five months, after she held up a sign saying ‘STOP NEW OIL”, in a breach of an injunction obtained by Valero, a US-based oil company.

The medical profession has rallied round Dr Benn. Dr Emma Runswick, speaking on behalf of the British Medical Association, the union for doctors, said there was "no possible public or patient interest" for disciplinary proceedings in these circumstances. "Climate change has been declared the biggest potential health crisis in the world by the World Health Organisation.”, she added.

The Doctors Association UK, organised by frontline doctors, issued a statement saying:

“This is a story of a clinician being punished for raising serious concerns about dangerous inaction on the greatest threat to global health we have ever, or will ever experience …as clinicians we must stand shoulder to shoulder when the evidence is as clear as with the climate crisis …DAUK will proudly stand alongside Dr Benn …Given the evidence on climate change and its health impacts, we strongly believe that peaceful protest should not be viewed as condemnable professional misconduct – but as commendable public health advocacy.”

UN intervention

In April, the UN Special Rapporteur for Environmental Defenders, Michel Forst, made an extraordinary intervention, issuing a public statement which implied that disciplinary action against doctors for participation in peaceful environmental protest could breach Article 3(8) of the Aarhus Convention, which the UK is bound by:

‘several medical doctors are currently facing the risk of losing their license – and all that goes with it – for having participated in peaceful environmental protests in the UK.

It is important for me to stress that professional sanctions can definitely be considered as a form of “penalization, persecution or harassment” and would therefore fall within the scope of my mandate.’

Tobacco industry parallels and ‘B.U.G.A.U.P.’ precedent

The fossil fuel industry has known for decades its products threatened the future of humanity. As recorded in the minutes of the meeting of the American Petroleum Institute of March 1980, Exxon and others were predicting ‘globally catastrophic effects’ by the 2060s. But instead of sounding the public alarm, they hired the same PR firms used by the tobacco industry to cast doubt on the links between tobacco and lung cancer, placing short-term profit over human health and life.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, a movement led by medical professionals in Australia, including Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, began defacing tobacco industry billboards under the acronym ‘B.U.G.A.U.P.’ (‘Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions’). Many were prosecuted for criminal damage, but the movement proved successful, and was recognised as a major driver for the ban on tobacco advertising in Australia in 1992. Chesterfield-Evans would later say, "I saved more people with a spray can than a scalpel."

Crisis of conscience across the professions

As the gulf widens between government and corporate policy on the one hand, and professional duties to uphold the law and public interest on the other, more and more professionals are taking a principled stand.

In March 2023, more than 180 leading lawyers published a ‘Declaration of Conscience’, committing to withhold their legal services from new fossil fuel projects and the prosecution of nonviolent protestors. Although it was widely reported the barristers among them were acting in breach of the cab-rank rule, the Bar Standards Board did not bring disciplinary proceedings against them.

In February 2024, more than 800 civil servants (from the US, EU and UK) issued a “Transatlantic Civil Servants’ Statement on Gaza: It Is Our Duty To Speak Out When Our Governments’ Policies Are Wrong”. In April 2024, the FDA, the union for senior civil servants, commenced legal action against the Government’s Rwanda plan, on the basis that implementation would require civil servants to break their code of practice obligation to uphold international law.

Justice lottery, uncertain defence and Swiss women

Following a pattern of jury acquittals in protest cases, some judges have been taking exceptional measures to preclude ‘not guilty’ verdicts, undermining the certainty and predictability that is meant to define the rule of law. In some cases defendants have even been banned from mentioning ‘climate change’ in court, and sent to prison just for doing so. On the other hand, others have continued to allow defendants to explain their motivation to protect life and health and to defend themselves on that basis. Last November a jury acquitted nine women who broke windows at HSBC in 2021, causing an alleged £500,000 of damage. By the end of 2022 HSBC had committed to end funding for new oil and gas projects.

On the last Friday before the trial begun, Judge Pounder removed all legal defences from the defendants, changing the legal goal-posts at the last minute and frustrating prior trial preparation.

Meanwhile in April of this year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Swiss government had violated the Article 8 rights of an association of senior Swiss women, by failing to enact adequate climate policies to protect them from the health impacts of heatwaves. Given that the High Court ruled in early May that the UK Government’s climate plans are irrational and unlawful, it follows that the Article 8 rights of the British public are being violated too.

On Wednesday, at Inner London Crown Court, Judge Silas Reid sentenced a group of five women who had also broken windows at JP Morgan for the same reason. He imprisoned Amy Pritchard, one of them,for 10 months, suspending the sentences of the others. In doing so, Judge Reid remarked: “None of you pleaded guilty despite your obvious guilt”, a comment contradicted not only by the verdict of this jury, but by others such as the jury who acquitted nine women at Southwark Crown Court last year, who broke windows at HSBC.

Indeed the five women were only found guilty after Judge Reid had warned the jury they could face criminal prosecution if they applied their conscience to the case, prompting an anonymous King’s Counsel to tell Private Eye: "I've never encountered a judge threatening jurors in the way that Judge Silas Reid did. That suggests a clear determination by him  to deter them from returning a verdict independently". The case is being appealed to the Court of Appeal on the basis that Judge Reid’s warning to the jury was unlawful, and led to a formal complaint to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office, signed by more than 1800 people, including the naturalist and broadcaster, Chris Packham.

Crowdfunder: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/support-medics-who-raise-the-alarm/

Notes for editors

Other quotes in response to news

Melinda Janki, winner of the Commonwealth Lawyers Rule of Law Award, 2023, said:

 "The jury has shown that commonsense and respect for life are more important than profits from destroying the climate. The real criminals are not the health professionals seeking to stop the breakdown of the Global climate system. The real criminals are the fossil fuel industry and complicit governments. The rule of law requires lawyers to put the right to life above all other considerations and to make today’s criminal law fit for purpose.”

A spokesperson for Lawyers Are Responsible, said:

“Despite the last-minute direction from the judge that they had no defence, the jury has declined to convict the six courageous medics who took evidence-based action to protect the public from climate breakdown. Meanwhile JP Morgan continues to reap vast profits from funding climate breakdown. As citizens we have no lawful means to compel our government to take action to preserve life, our health, and a safe stable climate. Civil disobedience in these circumstances is the only option. The Rule of Law will be meaningless in a world marred by conflict, instability and extreme heat and weather. We are so grateful to the medics for their brave actions to raise the alarm on the climate and ecological emergency.”

Some quotes from the defendants’ closing speeches

Ali Rowe said:

“My life's work has been to ensure harm doesn't happen to children. So when I ponder what makes a civilised society it is simple to me - it is one in which children are cherished. And the adults work collectively to keep them safe and enable them to thrive.”  

Dr Julliete Brown noted:          

“Court is a strange place. There is a kind of anaesthetising effect of all the bureaucracy, the paperwork, and the waiting around and the strange formalities and legal technicalities. I find myself feeling quite disempowered and searching for the humanity here. What we have tried to do - because this is important to our evidence - is to bring the life, the lives of the people we care for into the room.”

“It has been said in this case that no one should ignore the law due to strongly held beliefs or views. But to characterise climate science and the health harms of fossil fuels as a belief is a fundamental mischaracterisation. It’s wrong.  Our evidence has repeatedly shown that the health harms of fossil fuels are not a personal view or belief or opinion but scientific fact, facts agreed by every credible health expert and science expert in the world.”

Dr Patrick Hart said:

“I believe in my heart that my actions on that sweltering July day were right and just. This is all I need. The rest is up to you. And so it is in this same spirit of humanity that I put my trust in you, the jury. To be freely judged by my peers, by my fellow human beings, is a great privilege. Thank you.” 

Images of the action here: https://show.pics.io/xr-global-media-breaking-news/search?tagId=62d2c74ae9bed40012322c40

Film of Amy Pritchard, sent to prison for 10 months by Judge Reid

“The climate crisis is a child rights crisis” (UNICEF)

“WHO joins global call for a binding treaty to end 'self-sabotage' of addiction to fossil fuels” (September 2022)

“Climate change crisis goes critical” (The Lancet, Feb 2023)

“Banks have given almost $7tn to fossil fuel firms since Paris deal, report reveals” (May 2024)

“Doctors protest outside GMC offices to demand climate action” (BMJ, April 2024)

“JP Morgan economists warn climate crisis is threat to human race” (Guardian, 21 Feb 2020)

“Risky business: the climate and the macroeconomy” (JP Morgan leaked report, January 2020)

“In case of medical climate emergency break glass” (West Country Voices, May 2024)

“Climate and health: applying All Our Health” (Gov.UK, May 2022)

“Ruling against Just Stop Oil doctor alarms BMA” (BBC April 2024)

Press contact: 07561 098449 / 07795 316164

Email: info@planb.earth  Website: planb.earth