Ex-Pcs who shared ‘offensive’ messages in chat with Wayne Couzens lose appeals
Former Pcs Jonathon Cobban and Joel Borders failed to overturn their convictions.
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Two former police officers who shared “grossly offensive” messages in a WhatsApp group with Wayne Couzens have lost a bid to overturn their convictions at the High Court.
Former Pcs Jonathon Cobban and Joel Borders were each given a three-month jail sentence for sending grossly offensive messages on a public communications network.
Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard in November 2022 that the Metropolitan Police officers joked about raping a female colleague, talked about tasering children and people with disabilities, and displayed racist views in the group chat called “Bottle and Stoppers” which included Couzens.
The messages were discovered after Couzens’ devices were searched after his arrest for the kidnap, rape and murder of 33-year-old marketing executive Sarah Everard in March 2020.
At a hearing last month, lawyers for both men brought an appeal against their convictions and sentences at the High Court in London.
In a ruling on Friday, the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr and Mr Justice Saini dismissed the appeals.
In a summary of their decision, Baroness Carr said the pair “could have no reasonable expectation of privacy” over the messages which “relate to policing actions”.
“The stand-out feature of the offending was the enormous indirect ‘societal’ harm caused by the loss to public confidence in the police,” she added.
Baroness Carr continued: “In determining whether a message is ‘grossly offensive’ the tribunal of fact must ask whether its contents are liable to cause gross offence to those to whom it relates, or whether reasonable persons in our society would find it grossly offensive.”
In their written judgment, Baroness Carr and Mr Justice Saini also said: “On the facts of this case, given that the messages were intended to be ‘darkly humorous’ jokes and the recipients of the messages were found by the judge to have shared the appellants’ sense of humour, no assistance could be gained from their reaction to determine whether the messages were ‘grossly offensive’ in the eyes of a reasonable member of the public, judged by the standards of today’s society.”
Following the ruling, the most senior judge in England and Wales said the two men will be given 28 days “to reflect maturely on their present position” about whether to make a Supreme Court bid.
If the two men – who were granted bail after their sentencing – decide not to make a bid for a challenge at the UK’s highest court, they will need to return to Westminster Magistrates’ Court within 10 days.
At the hearing on June 26, Nicholas Yeo, for the two men, told judges that the offence they were convicted of “does not extend to private consensual messaging” and is instead aimed at messages “that would not be welcomed by the addressee”.
He said: “If one looks at the word indecent, it would be absurd to conclude that it applies to wanted indecent messages.”
Mr Yeo continued in written submissions: “It is lawful to send jokey, bombastic and iconoclastic messages to a closed group of people who will not be grossly offended thereby.”
Jocelyn Ledward KC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said there were no errors of law in the previous judge’s decision-making and that the men’s argument over the law was “fundamentally misconceived”.
She said in written submissions: “The provision is not exclusively concerned with protecting people from receipt of unsolicited messages of the proscribed character, but is rather aimed at ensuring propriety in communications over electronic public networks.”
The court was told that in one exchange, Borders wrote: “I can’t wait to get on guns so I can shoot some c*** in the face!”
In another, Cobban joked about sexually abusing domestic violence survivors whom he said “love it… that’s why they are repeat victims more often than not”.
It remains unfathomable that those tasked with upholding the law and protecting the public could think it right to share such grossly offensive material
Rosemary Ainslie, head of the Crown Prosecution Service’s Special Crime Division, welcomed the High Court’s ruling.
She said: “It remains unfathomable that those tasked with upholding the law and protecting the public could think it right to share such grossly offensive material.
“In rejecting the appeal, the High Court has confirmed that the sending of these messages amounts to a criminal offence.
“Jonathon Cobban and Joel Borders will now finally be punished for their actions.
“To be clear, where there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to do so, the CPS will always prosecute communications offences.”