Two Just Stop Oil activists who sought to spray orange paint on Taylor Swift’s private jet have been found guilty of the criminal damage of two planes.
Jennifer Kowalski, 29, and Cole Macdonald, 23, breached the perimeter fence at Stansted Airport in Essex with an angle grinder then took turns spraying two planes with paint and filming it.
Their trial, at Chelmsford Crown Court, was told they had been targeting the pop star’s jet but the two planes they sprayed belonged to an insurance firm and an investment group.
Kowalski, of Dumbarton in Scotland and Macdonald, of Brighton, East Sussex, said they had not intended to damage the two aircraft on June 20 last year but both were found guilty of criminal damage.
Jurors took less than two hours of deliberation to reach their unanimous verdicts.
Judge Alexander Mills said there was “no dispute” Kowalski and Macdonald caused the damage, spraying the aircraft with orange paint from a fire extinguisher.
David Barr, prosecuting, had said in his closing speech to jurors: “In reality the only issue for you to decide is what was going through the minds of those defendants when they sprayed the aircraft.
“Did they intend to cause damage or were they reckless as to whether damage would be caused.”
Barrister Laura O’Brien, defending, said Kowalski had believed the paint could be hosed off the planes.
Rebecca Martin, for Macdonald, said: “She believed, because she was told, it (the paint) wouldn’t have stuck to, stained or corroded the aircraft.
“She believed it would just slide off as that’s what she was told.”
The judge asked that pre-sentence reports be prepared about the two defendants, adding: “They will of course be all options pre-sentence reports.”
He bailed both defendants until October 27 when they are due to be sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court.
‘Swiftie brought swiftly to justice’
I’m not surprised at the verdict. I wonder what the sentence will be.
I’m not surprised by the verdict either though I’m sure they’d be able to get the paint off without respray the whole plane, no mention of the type of paint. Not a very well executed plan of they got the wrong planes but I wouldn’t be surprised if the insurance/finance companies they belonged to had investments in oil anyway. Curious about the sentence too, they’re young and I also don’t like to see draconian measures being taken with harsh sentences for activists so hopefully a lenient one. It’s not like we don’t need to stop using so much oil after all!!
Aye, Community Orders are the direction I hope sentencing goes, because as activists, that seems most fitting. However, the ends don’t justify the means, particularly when the means don’t reach the ends through their means, making the ends an unreachable end, and the means, ultimately pointless.
” though I’m sure they’d be able to get the paint off without respray the whole plane, ”
Experts who testified at the trial – and as reported on other acticles about the actual trial not just the verdict – stated that they couldn’t just wash the paint off and it made it’s way into the bubber seals of the windows.
Also being young isn’t an excuse. Both are well above the age of adulthood one being 23 and the other 29.