But when you make the choice to break the law based on what is right. You also make the choice to suffer the consequences.
No, they don’t choose to suffer the consequences, they choose to possibly suffer the consequences. The distinction is important.
There are mechanisms to stop unjust applications of the law, such as jury nullification. That they weren’t able to reach a conviction here is the system kind of working.
Their goal isn’t publicity, that’s ancillary to their actual goal. Hmm what could their actual goal be… oh right: Just Stop Oil
I’m fairly certain that these JSO protesters are fully aware that they’ll probably face consequences. They might hope for jury nullification, but I doubt they’d expect it.
The judge can order the jury as they please, but the jury does not need to justify their decisions. This is exactly what jury nullification is.
The jury is the conscience of society, and their job is not only to decide whether the defendant did the acts charged, but whether they should be condemned and punished for it. The jury protects us from immoral or socially undesirable results.
As society has failed to properly act to avert disastrous outcomes, the threat continues to become more and more direct.
Won’t someone think of the lost profits, and museum glass that has to be cleaned. The wealth of billionaires is certainly more important than billions of people dying.