‘Emoji trial’: Black man acquitted of hate crime charges over use of raccoon emoji in politician row

A Black man has been acquitted of hate crime charges after sending a raccoon emoji to a prospective Conservative MP on social media in a case that fuelled mounting concerns that anti-racist legislation is now being weaponised against ethnic minority groups.

The man, then aged 26 years old, was reported to the police by Ben Obese-Jecty, who is of mixed Black/white heritage, for posting the image on X, formerly known as Twitter, in September 2022.

During a heated exchange with Mr Obese-Jecty, who is the prospective MP for Huntingdon, the man posted a clown and raccoon emoji.

The term ‘c**n’, much like ‘coconut’, is an intra-communal insult among Black and Asian people used to describe other people from minoritised communities who are perceived as being sympathetic with white supremacist agendas. It implies that the person is brown on the outside but white on the inside.

Following the police complaint and further enquiries, the man was charged with racially aggravated malicious communications and appeared in Wood Green crown court in February and a white-majority jury returned a ‘not guilty’ verdict on both counts after a three-day hearing.

The man was represented by Achom and Partners law firm and his solicitor confirmed the case’s outcome with The Independent - and that he was acquitted on the basis that he typed the word ‘c**n’ when he meant to say ‘clown’ and was being playful by adding a raccoon emoji.

As part of this police investigation, the man lost jobs and his house was raided, The Independent was told. He was held in a cell for 10 hours, placed in a police car, interviewed under caution, searched, and had his phone seized.

In September 2022 Mr Obese-Jecty tweeted about the killing of rapper Chris Kaba, who was shot by a Metropolitan Police officer. An officer, named on Friday as Martyn Blake, is due to stand trial for murder.

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In the tweet Mr Obese-Jecty described politicians and commentators who protested against the killing of Chris Kaba as “hysterical”.

After some back and forth with the politician, the man replied: “I’m from the constituency you wasted your time standing as a candidate in,” accompanied by a raccoon and clown emoji.

Mr Obese-Jecty, a former army officer, argued that the emoji is a shorthand version of calling a person of colour a “c**n” and a “grossly offensive racial slur even though the suspect appears to be black”.

The politician has written for The Telegraph newspaper and is a regular GB News contributor, who revealed that the exchange he had with the man was his 74th and 75th incident of “racial abuse” in that year.

Summarising this case, author Nels Abbey, who attended the trial in support of the family, told The Independent: “Not murder, assault or rape but an Emoji trial”.

“From policing to prosecution, the emoji trial was the British justice system at its most alarmingly incompetent and culturally confused. It revealed that the system is just not fit for purpose,” Mr Abbey, author of Think Like A White Man and The Hip Hop MBA, said.

“Despite the young Black man’s acquittal, his arrest, the heavyhanded manner of his arrest, his 10-hour ordeal in a police station cell and subsequent prosecution represent a potentially criminal miscarriage of justice.

“One that nearly ruined the promising life of an upstanding brilliant young Black man and left him battling depression.”

“When I was contacted by the young man in question, and he informed me of what had happened to him and the trial that was about to take place I was in total disbelief.

“I could not believe such a thing would happen in a free, enlightened and multicultural western nation.”

The prosecutor argued that the use of the word ‘c**n’ is offensive regardless of who uses it and said it is akin to the use of the word ‘n****er’, The Independent was told.

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The man argued on the stand that in the Black community such terms are not universally offensive and, in the matter of the word ‘c**n’, can be used as a device to make a political critique.

“Given that the young Black man was addressing a tweet by Obese-Jecty describing politicians and commentators who protested against the killing of Chris Kaba as ‘hysterical’, in effect, I would argue that the young man was placed on trial for taking an anti-racist position in a manner that is commonly done within formerly colonised communities,” Mr Abbey added.

“The question is: why are the police and the CPS decimating their reputations and burning through their resources by playing along with this?”

Professor Kehinde Andrews, Britain’s first Black studies undergraduate director at Birmingham City University, previously told The Independent that he believes unfair police scrutiny and prosecutions around the use of terms like “coconut” have increased since the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020.

Ben Obese-Jecty has been approached for comment.

A Met Police spokesperson said: “In September 2022 police received a report of malicious communications via Twitter (now known as X).

“A man in his 40s reported that he had been sent a tweet featuring an emoticon that he believed to be a racial slur.

“A man was arrested in January 2023 and later released on bail. In February 2023 the Crown Prosecution Service authorised two charges of racially aggravated malicious communications.

“The man appeared at Thames Magistrates’ Court in March 2023.”