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Crime United Kingdom The Courts Twitter

Twitter User Sentenced To 150 Hours of Community Service In UK For Posting 'Offensive' Tweet (theverge.com) 108

Posted by BeauHD from the better-left-unsaid dept.
A Twitter user from the UK named Joseph Kelly has been sentenced to 150 hours of community service for posting a "grossly offensive" tweet about Captain Sir Tom Moore, a British Army officer who raised money for the NHS during the pandemic. The Verge reports: Moore became a national figure in the UK after walking 100 laps around his garden before his 100th birthday. He was later knighted by the Queen. The day after his death, Kelly, 36, tweeted "the only good Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella buuuuurn." Kelly was found guilty in February last year and faced possible jail time. His case brought attention to an often-criticized piece of UK legislation that allows social media users to be prosecuted for sending "grossly offensive" messages.

As reported by The National, Kelly was sentenced on Wednesday. His defense argued that Kelly had few followers on Twitter at the time; that he had been drinking before writing the post; and that he deleted the tweet just 20 minutes after sending it. "He accepts he was wrong. He did not anticipate what would happen. He took steps almost immediately to delete the tweet but the genie was out of the bottle by then," said Kelly's defence agent Tony Callahan. "His level of criminality was a drunken post, at a time when he was struggling emotionally, which he regretted and almost instantly removed." Kelly was sentenced to 18 months of supervision and 150 hours of unpaid work in the form of a Scottish Community Payback Order (CPO).
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Twitter User Sentenced To 150 Hours of Community Service In UK For Posting 'Offensive' Tweet More

Twitter User Sentenced To 150 Hours of Community Service In UK For Posting 'Offensive' Tweet

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  • Oh boy... (Score:3)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Friday April 01, 2022 @06:28PM (#62409550)
    'Muricans are gonna have a fit over the UK's "outraging public decency" law. Yes, the Brits lock people up for being grossly offensive! But don't forget, Murican's, Brits, & many others also lock people up for being naked in public, which some naturists find offensive.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I find your post offensive. The police will be at your door shortly.

    • Yup, can't be naked and most are fine with that. But ask them to wear a mask and suddenly it's too far!

    • Because they're offensive we lock them up because the public at large freaks out so much about nudity over here that they cause a massive public disturbance if they're walking about naked. We're not locking them up because they're offensive we're locking them up because they cause chaos among our stupid. It's easier to lock one naked person up and to convince tens of thousands not to be stupid.

      • It depends on where in the US that occurs. In some cities people can walk around topless or nude without causing a panic. Other cities are lenient of Solstice celebrations, national nude day, and world naked biking day. https://www.refinery29.com/en-... [refinery29.com]

    • If we in the U.S. locked people up for being offensive, then we wouldn't have any government at all!

    • I live in a city where it's legal to be nude. I used to live in a county where it's legal to be topfree. Many parts of the USA have decriminalized nudity.

      It's so funny to hear folks in the UK being snobbish about their prudish and unfree legal system. In the USA, not only do we have freedom of speech, but we are deliberately not "lock[ing] people up for being naked in public," because we want freedom of expression.

      If you can't say "fuck the Queen, fuck her Knights, and fuck the entire system of royalty and

  • There's no England anymore. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by biggaijin ( 126513 ) on Friday April 01, 2022 @06:32PM (#62409554)

    Free speech has been dead in the UK for quite a while now, but I am still surprised to hear that bad taste is a crime now.

    • It died when we allowed mega corporations to purchase virtually every single platform. Here in America you can say whatever you want as long as it's not going to have a material impact on the profitability of large corporations. So if you say something that might incite violence and lead to either lawsuits and or A disruption in the economy at Large you're going to get smacked down.

      It's not about right or left except in as much as the right wing was where the aristocracy sat. At the end of the day it's

    • Not England. The article is about Scotland, which as any fule no has a different legal system

    • Free speech has nothing to do with:
      a) hate speech
      b) insulting someone - even post-hum

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Mate, this is nothing. The government is in the process of banning protests that cause "annoyance" or make too much noise. Freedom here is dying fast and idiots are cheering it on.

  • not proportinoal (Score:3)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Friday April 01, 2022 @06:47PM (#62409594)

    Considering that the tweet was only live for 20 minutes, the sentence seems particularly harsh. People say all kinds of offensive things, we do not give them community service and supervision for that. If you really have to punish someone for being a dumbass then counseling/therapy would be much more effective than picking up trash and random drug tests.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      150 hours is about a month's work. Whether that's excessive or not probably depends on what the community service is. Whether it's just to have ANY punishment is questionable, but I wouldn't call it particularly harsh. And if "counseling/therapy" is considered punishment, then I would expect it to be totally ineffective. That generally only works if all parties want it to do so, and even then it's a bit iffy.

      The only real question in this case seems to be "What level of civility is it appropriate to en

      • > What level of civility is it appropriate to enforce on-line?

        I think short of actionable threats, none. That is why the sentence in this case is harsh, it deserves no punishment.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          So you thing fraud and extortion are fine?

          There are lots of edge cases, and I suspect that any simple answer will be wrong.

          • Extortion is a threat. Fraud deprives others of their rights. Saying something dumb, on the street or online, is not a threat. It is okay to make unpopular statements, but if you make unpopular statements you should expect social consequences not criminal consequences. Dumb statements might isolate you but should not incarcerate you.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by HiThere ( 15173 )

              1) They aren't incarcerating him.
              2) The "social consequences" depend upon there being feedback relationships that don't exist, or are severely attenuated online.
              3) The line between abuse and intimidation is very fine. It probably can't be successfully drawn except in individual cases. (And I don't think you want laws fine tuned to the individual.)
              4) Threats exist along a scale. It's not yes or not. To an extent I am threatening your view of the world with this response. (It's a very minor threat, but i

              • You're right that there are gray areas, but this tweet didn't defraud, threaten, intimidate, or injure anyone. It didn't incite anything. The UK is saying insulting a dead person is a criminal offense, which I find horrifying.

        • Some people think there is no difference between online and real life.
          Some other people think different.

          I guess you belong to the later.

  • Psychopaths have no conscience and many people on 'the spectrum' don't... It isn't their fault. Why should they be punished for their genetics?

    • Because they're annoying when they get out of hand and hurting them is no loss to those of us tired of their shit. Extra bonus for crushing drunks who are self-pitying garbage. The world is overly nice to problems when they may often be bullied into shutting the fuck up.

      A world where every defect is yielded to is ruled by the defective
      I'm nice to spergies (like many of my creative friends who are on the spectrum) but if they act out I let them know it because they are capable of self-control when suitably m

      • Maybe having a conscience is the defect? You really shouldn't get emotionally triggered nor feel fully superior just because you think you have one. They are not full psychopaths. Their "deficiency" might not be the lack of a conscience but something else.

      • Wow, you really sound like an asshole.

    • Because we just can't have psychopaths doing what they will in public. If they did, it would be anarchy! They need to either grow a conscience, or at least ACT like they have one.
      • You might be thinking of a cartoon or Hollywood psychopath. Read "Snakes in Suits" sometime. They are at the top of the corporate, banking, and political world. They can choose to "fake it" and pretend to care, but they can do things that people with a conscience just can't do. Psychopaths are everywhere around you already; men, women, young, old... Everyone assumes that everyone else is just like them and has a conscience, but it just isn't true.

  • And this is why we shot them (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    And made them go away.

    If the current regime isn't careful, they're going to be reminded why.

  • Every so often, there's a story that reminds me everything, including all the weird things, in the US Constitution were put there as a direct action to the fuckery the British liked to do.

    I'm so grateful for the First Amendment sometimes.

    • I'm so grateful for the First Amendment sometimes.
      The First Amendment is a "contract" between the government and its citizens.
      It has nothing to do with libel, insults or defamation, hate speech etc.

  • ...were it not for the fact that these days devising reasons for getting offended is the primary occupation of most individuals in the American-influenced world, and this might include judges.
    In this case, though, they've done well.

    • Still struggling to figure out what's the saddest bit though; bloke writing about tom, someone suing him, judge finding him guilty of something, or someone actually trawling tweets for offensive posts and reporting it to whoever.
      Now that we have established a precedent, how about visiting your local council estate, getting some saucy quotes and rounding up some free labourers - streets need cleaning, old people need some shopping done, lorry drivers queuing at dover need water delivered and portapotties nee

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • What should be researched is how this stifles speech. I would never even comment on this story if I was not anonymous. I'm quite certain that very few people will come out in support of free speech unless they are anonymous.
    • AFAIK, "outraging public decency" is a very old law & usually rolled out over very public news items like the one in TFS. The last time I can remember was when the gutter press (The Daily Mail) ran a campaign against an artist who'd made earrings out of aborted fetus' as a social-political statement. The unjust thing about the law & why it should be repealed is that nobody knows whether what you're doing is a crime until the verdict is passed. Yes, it can have a chilling effect. In practice, AFAIK,

  • You should see what happens in Ukraine when someone disses the military online. Repairs to their front door and door frame are usually the least of their problems. Military law in times of war is truly a harsh mistress.

  • living in britain. this law is leaves a pit of disgust in my stomach

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by spth ( 5126797 )

      I'm from Germany. We don't have much of a free speech tradition, compared to other countries, we often had more restrictions here.

      About 6 years ago, I was in Northern Ireland (a day trip from Ireland, mostly to visit the Whitehead Railway Museum). In Belfast, there were large posters by the government with the headline "One wrong word can lead to a sentence" (below was a little bit of small text stating the maximum prison sentences of a recently-introduced anti-hate-speech law). At that time, IMO, such a po

  • I guess this means officially, the only good freely speaking human is a sentenced one in the UK?

  • Okay (Score:2)

    by Gabest ( 852807 )

    UK is crazy anyone. I mean they filter porn and their boss is the queen like a bee hive.

  • One of the issues on-line is that anonymity breeds irresponsible ppl who will lie, say nasty things, etc. AND we need to stop this by removing true anonymity.
    BUT, this guy expressed an opinion. He did not lie about the man. He did not assault his character. He simply showed that he has no respect for the dead, or for soldiers or ppl that do decent things in their lives.
    This is EXACTLY what Free speech is supposed to protect.

    BUT, this is UK, and not our laws. so....

  • Where his family enriched themselves and are going to jail probably.

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