Saboteur found guilty of using tampered video in bid to bolster assault claim
A hunt saboteur has been convicted by a jury of using edited footage to falsely bolster his claim that a farmer had assaulted him on the farmer’s land.
David Graham was found guilty unanimously of perverting the course of justice by using video evidence which misrepresented what had happened.
The video was edited on a loop sequence, incorrectly showing the farmer repeatedly kicking out.
However, the jury of four women and eight men, sitting at Leicester Crown Court, acquitted Graham of making a false complaint of assault relating to the same incident, on Saturday, March 5, 2016.
Defence barrister Michael Goold summarised the verdicts, saying: “The jury has found there was a genuine complaint, for which false evidence was submitted.”
Graham denied both charges, telling the jurors that the assault, which left him with a bruised chest and difficulty breathing had genuinely happened.
The 35-year-old also said he had “no reason to think” the footage he handed over to the police, from his bodyworn camera, had been edited by someone else before he downloaded it from the Cloud storage of the West Midlands Hunt Saboteur group, of which he was a member.
He said he briefly lost consciousness during the assault and was unaware the footage was altered.
The defendant claimed he was “kicked and punched” by the farmer, Henry Milner, who caught him trespassing on his fields in Newton Burgoland, North West Leicestershire.
Graham and a colleague were monitoring the activities of Atherstone Hunt at the time, which had just crossed farmland belonging to the Milner family.
Graham also alleged Mr Milner’s brother, Thomas, had pushed over his colleague, whom he refused to name and who was not called as a witness.
The Milner brothers gave evidence during the trial, saying they became aware of balaclava-wearing trespassers on their land and went by quad bike across the field to tell them to leave. The brothers disagreed that anything unlawful happened in the “slippery and wet” field, and claimed nothing more than pushing and shoving had taken place.
Graham said when he made the assault complaint to a police officer a couple of days later, the constable told him the footage of the alleged assault appeared to have been tampered with.
The defendant claimed he was made to feel he was in the wrong when he was the victim. He reported the officer to the Police Complaints Commission, but the officer was later vindicated.
David Lee, the trial prosecutor, said after the verdicts were announced that the complaint had had a “huge impact” on the officer because, due to an administrative error, his address had been made public.
As a result the constable “had his windows put in”, the court was told. Mr Lee added: “I don’t suggest the defendant did that.” Henry Milner gave a voluntary interview four months after the assault allegation was made, denying any wrongdoing, and the matter was discontinued against him in the summer of 2018.
The defendant, formerly of Pepys Corner, Coventry, who now lives elsewhere and runs a T-shirt printing business, was charged in 2018. Graham, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism, described being arrested as “quite frightening”.
Sentencing Graham, Judge Ebrahim Mooncey said: “You submitted to the police video-recorded evidence which was tampered with - which is perverting the course of justice. Normally people would go to prison straight away but in your case I’m mindful this case goes back to 2016, when you were 30 and now you’re 35. I’m mindful you’ve never been in trouble before.”
Defence counsel Mr Goold said Graham was passionate about animal rights campaigning. Graham was given a 12-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, with 100 hours of unpaid work. He was told to pay £1,000 costs and placed on a seven-year restraining order, banning any contact with the Milner brothers or going to their farm.
There was a genuine complaint, for which false evidence was submitted
Michael Goold