Now, This Is Chutzpah To The Nth Degree!

Sometimes, juries produce bizarrely perverse decisions. And sometimes they overturn them:

A father who introduced a five metre social distancing rule in his family home to avoid his wife and children during a lockdown divorce has won an appeal against his controlling behaviour conviction.

Wait, what? How can he have been prosecuted, never mind found guilty, for doing exactly what the government and civil service was doing to the entire country?!?

Peter Copland, 66, allocated time slots for his wife Maire and their two children to use the kitchen at their home in Paignton, Devon, after the couple separated during the coronavirus pandemic. The retired engineer brought the rules in between April and August 2020 as the pair divorced after 33 years of marriage. He sent her emails about the five metre rule - which started out as the two metre rule - and the time schedule to the use the kitchen and other rooms in the property.

Exeter Magistrates Court convicted him of coercive and controlling behaviour following a trial and ruled that the break up rules were inflexible and became 'intimidating and domineering'.

And did they ask for 650 other charges to be brought against the MPs who passed the Covid laws too? 

Barrister Tom Faulkner, representing Mr Copland, argued there was no case to answer. He said Mr Copland also wanted to 'keep the peace and avoid arguments' with his wife and children. He also said Mr Copland was vulnerable to Coronavirus and wanted to preserve social distancing as instructed by the Government in the early days of the pandemic.

QED! 

Judge Kevin de Haan KC and two magistrates quashed the two convictions which included controlling behaviour and an assault on his wife. 

It's astonishing he was ever convicted.