Put aside any uninformed views

Not a hate crime after all?

Within 48 hours of Brianna Ghey’s murder, DCS Mike Evans of Cheshire police told the media that the force had “no information or intelligence to suggest it was a hate crime”. The statement caused an immediate uproar, particularly among the LGBTQ+ community, who held vigils in her memory. Many people suspected that Brianna’s being a transgender girl [might] well have played a role in her killing and were angry that detectives seemed so quick to rule out transphobia as a motive.

After all, it’s not as if the detectives could have known more about it than the “many people” who were watching from Twitter.

Although transphobia did not come up in the trial, the judge, Mrs Justice Yip, may consider it to be an aggravating factor when sentencing one or both of the teenagers. But she told potential jurors on the first day of the trial to put aside any “uninformed views” about Brianna’s killing.

She also took a dim view of online commentators who pronounced that the defendants were transphobic. After the case was opened, the prosecution complained about a tweet from the barrister Jolyon Maugham, the founder of the Good Law Project, saying the teenagers had exchanged “transphobic slurs”.

Yip said the tweet was potentially in contempt of court, a serious crime that has previously resulted in short jail terms for those judged to have prejudiced a trial. Heer said the prosecution had deliberately not used such terms in the presence of the jury.

Maugham was spoken to by police and deleted the tweet, the court heard.

Good law indeed.