This week on CrowdJustice, a veterinary nurse is crowdfunding to challenge the DEFRA’s ‘death row’ sentencing of Geronimo, her alpaca, two young lawyers are crowdfunding legal support for EU citizens in Britain, and a British Airways employee is fighting religious discrimination at work.
Upskirting
The Scotsman reports that barely one in seven reports of ‘upskirting’ in the region make it to court. Scotland beat England to make the sexual harassment phenomenon illegal, though one brave individual, Gina Martin, has collected over 70,000 signatures to get England and Wales to follow suit. An upskirting bill is now being passed south of the Border, which might beat the Scottish to addressing the ‘limitations’ that are making Scots' reports so difficult to prosecute.
Medical and police failings
This Monday Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba won an important appeal in the Court of Appeal. As a junior doctor, she wrongly diagnosed a six-year-old’s sepsis, and he died later that day. She was struck off the medical register and convicted of manslaughter amidst concerns around systemic failures in the hospital she worked in. The case exposed a raft of concerns around the role of criminal law in medicine, writes the BBC. The case was crowdfunded on CrowdJustice.
Meanwhile, in the police world, this week a police watchdog found that police failings did not amount to misconduct in the case of Rash Charles, a black teen who died in police custody in Dalston last year. Imran Khan QC, who represented Stephen Lawrence’s family in the police investigation of his racially motivated murder, acted for the Charles family. The Independent reports the family is considering challenging the decision.
Crowdfunding and legal successes
This summer CrowdJustice are celebrating six successful cases that have made a difference for individuals and wider society, forcing the government to accelerate British Sign Language as a GCSE, holding the government accountable for mishandling of refugees children and securing equal rights to civil partnerships.