An English judge this week sentenced a woman who posted a hateful message on X to two years and seven months in prison. Lucy Connolly has no previous convictions. The same judge allowed a habitual child pornography offender to walk free from court without any prison time in 2021.
This situation underlines two concerns. First, that Americans are very lucky to have the First Amendment and its preference for robust, even hateful, speech rather than government censorship. Second, the reason why so many Britons are increasingly disenchanted with their justice system.
Connolly’s offense centered on her July 29 post following an incident that day in which three young girls were murdered. Their murderer was a Briton wrongly identified by some as a migrant. Connolly wrote, “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f*****g hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it.”
One week later, amid widespread rioting over the girls’ murders, a hotel hosting migrants was partially set alight.
Connolly pleaded guilty to stirring up racial hatred. Under English law, prosecutors do not need to show intent to prove this offense, only that “having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up [by the language].” This is in stark contrast to the greater free speech protections provided under U.S. law. In the United States, Connolly’s words would only constitute an offense if prosecutors could prove she sought to incite imminent violence and was likely to do so. Connolly’s “for all I care” versus deliberate call to violence, and the high emotion of the girls’ murder, would likely see her avoid any such conviction in a similar American legal scenario.
It’s clear, however, that Judge Melbourne Inman’s sentence against Connolly was at least partially motivated by his disdain for her political viewpoints. In his sentencing report, the judge declared that “It is a strength of our society that it is both diverse and inclusive … sentences for those who incite racial hatred and disharmony in our society are intended to both punish and deter.”
Again, this would be ripe grounds for an appeal under U.S. law, as the judge explicitly praised diversity in imposing a custodial sentence upon Connolly for her contrary attitude.
However, what’s more absurd here is the discrepancy between how the judge treated Connolly and how he has treated other, arguably far more serious offenders. In 2021, for example, Inman ruled in a case involving a man, Anh La, who was found to have 1,000 images and videos of child pornography that he had accrued over a 10-year period. More than 200 of these images were what English law defines as Category A images, or images involving children, which include “penetrative sexual activity, sexual activity with an animal or sadism.”
A cause for imprisonment, you might think?
Nope. Not only did Inman avoid giving La a two-year, seven-month custodial sentence, but he also avoided giving La any prison time at all. Instead, the judge suspended La’s prison sentence. He did so even though La’s defense attorney noted that his presentence report “concludes something of a failure to recognize the seriousness of these types of offenses and the failure to recognize or acknowledge his own actions to the complete extent.”
Don’t misunderstand me. Those who rioted against mosques and set fire to migrant shelters this summer were not patriots. They were the exact opposite: thugs who targeted innocent people for no justifiable reason. Those violent offenders deserved the prison terms they have received. Nevertheless, the fact that a judge views the possession of hundreds of images of penetrative child pornography as less serious than one X post is a big problem. It undermines a central foundation of any healthy judiciary: public trust that a criminal sentence will reflect the variable public concern about a particular criminal act. Making matters worse, in relation to the sentencing variances between La and Connolly, English prisons were less congested in 2021 but are now at breaking point.
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This sentence will fuel some of the same grievances that motivated the violent rioting in August. Yes, the blaming of migrants for white working-class economic and social woes is a deflection of inadequate work ethics in many English communities. (They want to blame migrants rather than get on their bikes.) Still, many Britons believe their legal system is ideologically politicized and disinterested in confronting criminality of key public concern.
This perception is well-reflected by the public uproar on X over the discrepancy between Connolly’s sentence and those of others.