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Case may leave hare coursing law in tatters
BRITAIN'S ban on hare coursing could be in tatters by this afternoon when a judge rules on allegations against former champion race horse trainer Peter Easterby and manor-owning huntsman Major John Shaw.
Crown lawyers have warned that if the two men's defence succeeds at the landmark case in Scarborough, it will be impossible for police to enforce the section of the Hunting Bill which protects the hares from having dogs set on them.
Sinnington Hunt member Shaw, 55, of Welburn Manor, Welburn, near Kirkbymoorside, and Easterby, 79, charged under his birth name of Miles Henry Easterby, of Habton Grange Farm, Great Habton, deny permitting land to be used for hare coursing and attending hare coursing.
But Scarborough Magistrates' Court was told at both events, held on consecutive days in March 2007, there were two lines of spectators standing in the fields to create "an arena".
Beaters waving flags drove the hares past a tent where a man in a red jacket was holding onto two muzzled greyhounds, one with a red collar and one with a white collar.
As the hares passed, he let slip the dogs – not knowing that everything was secretly filmed by animal rights campaigners Joe Hashman and Michelle Bryan, using a video camera disguised as a pair of field glasses.
Yorkshire Greyhound Field Training Club, which organised the events, had put up a fence to stop the dogs and allow the hares to escape.
Although the events purported to be driving hares to guns for legal shooting, the court heard the only shots fired were into the air, while the fence seemed to have been in the wrong place because the hares were running a different way.
In his closing speech yesterday, Matthew Donkin, prosecuting, suggested the whole spectacle was merely "hare coursing under another guise".
Easterby and Shaw's defence is based on a 1969 ruling from the House of Lords over a drugs case that "in all ordinary criminal cases" guilty intent as well as criminal acts were necessary for conviction.
David Hatton QC, defending, argued: "It's our submission that these offences must carry with them the requirement of a guilty mind.
"Attending a hare coursing event, if it was one, and permitting land to be used for such an event, if it was one, are not actually offences unless the granting of permission carried with it appropriate knowledge that what he was attending and permitting was unlawful acts."
But the prosecution underlined that accepting this defence could make interpretation of the Hunting Act very different to what the Government had intended.
Mr Donkin said: "If someone stumbles across an event and watches it, they are just as guilty as someone else who has had it in the diary for three months. It would also make policing of it impossible."
The court heard that Shaw had been advised by a leading barrister that what he was allowing on the land was legal.
A policeman even turned up on the farmland owned by Shaw, and then left, though he told the court he later regretted not staying to find out more.
Easterby only turned up towards the end of the meet on his land. District Judge Christine Harrison reserved judgment until 2.15pm today.
n The Countryside Alliance say the case is only the second of its kind to arise since the Hunting Act was passed. The first was heard in King's Lynn before Christmas when the defendants were convicted.
Mary Birkbeck, 77, was found guilty of allowing land on her estate in Little Massingham, Norfolk, to be used for hare coursing Organiser Les Anderson, 80, of Feltwell, Norfolk, was also convicted.
Both were given two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay 1,000 costs.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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