Charles Thomson - Freelance Writer/Reporter

'Just comply? They probably said that to Rosa Parks as well' - Inside former world boxing champ Terry Marsh's latest trial, for electoral fraud and assault
May 2018, Yellow Advertiser

Friday, January 26, 2018

I arrive at Basildon Magistrates Court to find Terry Marsh waiting for me outside. Once upon a time, he might have been mobbed by fans wanting photos and autographs. Dubbed the ‘fighting fireman’, his day job as a local firefighter and his successful parallel career as a professional boxer made him a local hero during the 1980s.

His celebrity peaked with his 1987 title fight against Joe Manley, for the world light welterweight championship. The bout had to be staged in a specially erected big top because no venue in Basildon was large enough to accommodate the demand for tickets. He won by technical knockout and donated thousands of pounds to the fire station where he worked. Months later, he successfully defended the title against Japanese fighter Akio Kameda at the Royal Albert Hall, then retired undefeated after being diagnosed with epilepsy.

In the intervening years, a high profile attempted murder trial and a peculiar foray into politics have garnered the retired champ a degree of notoriety, but today, nobody hanging around the court precinct seems to recognise him. Now almost 60, he is still wiry, dressed inconspicuously in a dark suit with green and yellow tie. His one-time mop of dark curls has been replaced by a salt and pepper crop, atop which rests a pair of red and brown spectacles.

Accompanied by his long-term partner Debbie, Terry seems upbeat for a man who will shortly be asked to enter pleas on charges of electoral fraud and assault. As we head inside, I ask whether he is represented today and he tells me that would cost a lot of money, so he’s decided to speak for himself.

He chuckles: “And you know what they say; a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.”

But Marsh is at least better versed in the court system than most – although, despite numerous brushes with the law, he is proud to say that he has ’no criminal record in any way, shape or form’. That’s not for want of trying by the authorities. The past three decades have seen him charged with alleged offences ranging from not wearing a seatbelt to the attempted murder of boxing promoter Frank Warren. But despite the repeated attempts to send him away, he has always been declared innocent in the end.

In recent years, his appearances in the press have largely been restricted to election time. Around eight years ago, Terry changed his name by Deed Poll to ’None of the Above X’ and stood in a string of national and local elections. This unusual decision was part of his ongoing campaign for the inclusion of a ’None of the Above’ box on all British ballot papers. It is this quest, in a roundabout way, which has brought him before the court today.

I called Terry last week about an unrelated matter. He answered my question but then told me he had a much bigger story for me. He had just found out he’d been charged with illegally removing a ballot paper from a polling station, and assaulting somebody in the process. He was innocent, he said, and his trial was going to allow him to prove that disenfranchised voters had the right to formally withhold their votes, rather than just not taking participating in the ballot. So here we are, a few days later, awaiting Terry’s plea hearing. As we wait, Terry outlines the case.

The way the CPS tells it, on county election day last May, Terry walked into a polling station at St Mary’s Church Hall, Langdon Hills, picked up a ballot paper and tried to take it home instead of using it to vote. This, prosecutors contend, was unlawful. On his way out of the building, they add, he attacked an electoral officer who tried to prevent him from committing this offence.

Needless to say, this is not quite how Terry sees it. He was entitled to take his ballot paper home, he tells me, and he simply exercised his legal right to use reasonable force to extricate himself from an unlawful detention.

Despite his fervent belief in his own innocence, Terry doesn’t seem especially grouchy about having been charged. In fact, he seems quite enthused by the idea of using his pending trial to promote his campaign for electoral reform.

“I am here to argue the point that you can take your vote home with you,” he says, as we sit on a cold, metal bench in the court waiting area. In his view, removing your ballot paper is the only legitimate way of registering a protest vote in a British election. But more on that later.

Presently, Terry seems less concerned with the fact that he’s been charged with assaulting a civil servant than he does with the state of the Essex legal system.

“If somebody makes a claim that they have been assaulted, then I believe they should have a right to a hearing,” he says. “But I don’t have any faith in the magistrates’ court. I believe an allegation like that should be heard by a jury in a crown court.”

Which is where, until a few days ago, Terry was led to believe he would be tried.

Several weeks after the incident at the polling station, he says, a couple of police officers knocked on Terry’s door and asked him to visit Basildon police station at a convenient time, to answer an allegation of assault. He did so, but chose to answer ’no comment’ to all of the force’s questions.

“I’ve learned at my cost that you don’t speak to the police,” he says, matter-of-factly. Besides which, he adds, he’d already sent a formal letter of complaint to the council, which he considers his statement on the matter.

After that police interview, he heard nothing more about the case and assumed it had just been dropped.That was until the evening of December 28, when, as he sat in his living room with Debbie and her mother, enjoying a few glasses of wine, there came a knock at the door. Upon answering it, Terry says was grabbed by four police officers who told him he was under arrest for failing to attend a court hearing. He spent the night in a cell at Southend police station.

“I got no sleep because they left the lights on all night,” he says. “They gave me no food or drink and I didn’t really know what was going on.”

When he was taken to Chelmsford Magistrates Court the following morning, he was told he was charged with three offences; fraudulently removing a ballot paper from a polling station, assaulting an electoral officer, and failing to attend court. As the hearing got underway, he was asked for his name and address. Upon giving them, he was asked to repeat his address again.

“Ah,” he recalls somebody saying, before it was eventually explained that his summons had mistakenly been sent to an address he’d moved out of two years earlier.

“The weird thing is, why would they send it there?” he says. “I was living at my address, which is listed in the electoral register – which is the same address I used to vote on the day, the same address where the police visited me a few weeks later, and the same address where they arrested me for not going to court.”

The charge of failing to attend was dropped accordingly. As his hearing at Chelmsford proceeded, Terry was informed that the electoral fraud charge was an either-way offence, meaning he could choose to be tried at either a magistrates’ court or a crown court. It was a no-brainer for Terry. He immediately chose a trial by jury in a crown court.

“My experience with magistrates is not very good,” he explains. He cites a particular case, roughly 12 years ago, in which he was prosecuted for allegedly driving without his seatbelt on. The only witness was the policewoman who logged the alleged offence. He chose to represent himself, but when he asked to cross-examine the officer, he was told he wasn’t allowed.

“Still, at the end of the case, it was just my word against hers,” he says. “I said to the magistrates, ’How is that proof beyond a reasonable doubt?’ But they convicted me anyway.”

It was only after his conviction that he realised he could definitively disprove the officer’s story.

“She claimed she knew I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt because she saw the buckle shining above my shoulder. I realised I was driving a car where the buckle sat below, down by my waist. I took that evidence to an appeal and I won. The woman had lied.”

The episode has left him sceptical of magistrates’ courts.

“In the justice system, they leave a lot to be desired,” he says. “I would accept a verdict from a jury, but I have little respect for the institution of magistrates.”

So he was less than impressed, he says, when he received a letter several days ago from Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, stating that he was no longer standing trial in the crown court. He shows it to me.

“Unfortunately, an error was made by the court and the charges which you face are what are known as ’summary only’,” it reads. “This means there is no power to elect a crown court trial and your case is only able to be tried by the magistrates’ court. In giving you the option to elect a crown court trial, the court made a mistake. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and accept that this was entirely the court’s error.”

Now, says Terry, not only is he sitting in a magistrates’ court, contrary to his wishes, but he is being asked to enter a plea without having received any evidence under disclosure, or even a copy of his own charge sheet.

When the courtroom opens shortly before 10am, we make our way inside. I head left to a press seat whilst Terry and Debbie turn right and sit in the public gallery, where they are joined not long after by Terry’s son Karl and brother Jimmy. It’s almost three hours before Terry’s case is called on – a particularly long time for Jimmy, who is mentally disabled, to sit still in the court. He starts gently humming to himself. It is barely audible, but persistent enough to irritate at least two of the three magistrates, who repeatedly shush him and on one occasion tell him to either be quiet or leave the courtroom.

By the time they eventually get around to Terry’s case, there is a palpable sense that his card has been well and truly marked. Despite representing himself, he is locked in the dock, rather than being allowed to stand at counsel’s table. From behind the glass, he can barely hear the magistrates or the prosecutor and has to keep asking them to repeat themselves.

After locking Terry in, there is a long pause in the proceedings while the prosecutor gesticulates confusedly and whispers at the legal advisor. I can just about hear him complaining that the case is listed on his laptop as having already been referred to crown, so he doesn’t understand what we’re doing here. There follows more animated chatter, now involving the magistrates as well. After a lot of shrugging and exasperated facial expressions, they eventually ask Terry what exactly he’s doing here, which he tries his best to explain. Situation clarified, sort of, there’s a bit of tutting and head-shaking, before the hearing gets properly underway.

The legal advisor reads the charges to Terry and asks him to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty. Terry responds that he’s going to do that in just a moment, but first he wants to read a short statement. He produces a sheet of A4 paper which looks like it has perhaps seven or eight sentences printed on it. It takes up around a third of the page. It is not long. Nonetheless, the advisor tells him he cannot read his statement and must answer, simply, ‘guilty or not guilty’. Terry reiterates that he’s coming to that in a moment, but first he has a statement to make.

“I actually asked for a trial by crown and I haven’t had a response,” he begins. “I had a letter to say it was not in the jurisdiction. I have yet to receive a charge sheet.”

“The reality is, we are here today,” the advisor interjects. “The offences are summary only.”

“I was asked to visit the police station at the back end of May,” Terry continues. “That was the end of it. There were no conditions of bail. The next thing I remember is the 28th of December, some seven months later, I’m abducted by four police officers and taken to Southend police station, where I was kept in the cells overnight.”

The legal advisor is now shouting and the chair magistrate has joined in, instructing Terry that he must not read anymore of his statement and must speak only to say ‘guilty or not guilty’.

“I do not consent to this hearing,” Terry continues.

“Right!” exclaims the legal advisor, spinning around in his chair to face the magistrates and then leaping out of it. “You don’t have to stay here and listen to this!”

He suggests the magistrates leave, call security to remove Terry from the courtroom and then hold the hearing in his absence. With that, the magistrates rise and begin walking out of court – Terry still reading from his statement – and the legal advisor telephones downstairs.

A reporter for The Sun walks in amidst the maelstrom and looks at me, pie-eyed. By the time the magistrates have even left the courtroom, Terry has already finished his statement.

“They may have the legal authority,” he concludes, “but they do not have the moral authority to judge me. I will now play the game, but under duress.”

He looks up, ready to give his pleas, just as the magistrates close the door behind them, leaving him facing an empty bench. Had they remained in their seats, the magistrates could now have continued. Moments later, a security guard walks into the now placid courtroom, looks totally mystified as to why he’s been called upstairs, unlocks the dock for Terry and tells him he’s free to leave the courtroom. The Sun reporter and I remain in our seats, agog the behaviour we’ve just witnessed from the court, and wait roughly ten minutes for the magistrates to return, enter ‘not guilty’ pleas on Terry’s behalf, then set a trial date. With that, I leave the court, tell Terry when and where his trial has been listed, and then head back to the office.

Not long after I arrive, a colleague tells me Terry Marsh is listed to appear tomorrow at Basildon Crown Court. I call the court to check the list is accurate, then explain to the listings officer that his case has already been sent back to magistrates’.

“Well,” the lady says, “nobody’s told us.”

Friday, April 27, 2018

Three months after his plea hearing, and a fortnight before his trial, Terry drops into the Yellow Advertiser office with Debbie and Jimmy. He is no longer representing himself, he announces. He has hired a lawyer.

“There was a matter of cost involved in the decision to represent myself,” he says, “and you can endear yourself to a jury by representing yourself. However, when I took that decision, I was under the impression that I was going to be in front of a jury. Then it became apparent that I wasn’t. Seeing the magistrates’ position that day, and from my own experience as well – and because they’ve put in the case management document that if I represent myself, I’m not allowed to cross-examine any witnesses – I was compelled to get myself a barrister.”

How did he feel about the magistrates’ behaviour at that last hearing, I ask?

“I’m in court and the prosecution guy is complaining that he hasn’t been told the charge was changed and he wishes someone would have told him,” says Terry. “Well, I felt the same way! I’d had no apology or anything like that. There’s something really wrong with the way I was treated. But they allowed him to say his piece, yet they didn’t allow me to say mine. I just wanted to make my point.”

He has received some disclosure from the CPS, which he has brought with him, but is still fighting for the release of what prosecutors are calling ‘unused material’. They won’t give him the documents because they claim they wouldn’t be useful to his defence. But, he asks, not unreasonably, how does he know that’s true if he’s not allowed to see them?

The documents he’s brought with him – statements by several witnesses who were in the polling station during the incident – reveal Terry was detained there for between 20 and 25 minutes; much longer than I had imagined. The man with whom he got into the altercation admits Terry repeatedly tried to get around him and leave the polling station during that time, but that he consistently blocked him from doing so. This, Terry feels, is a clear case of unlawful detention; an election official does not have a legal right to detain somebody against their will.

Terry had gone to the polling station on his way to a hospital appointment, which it had taken months to get arranged, he says. He feared that if he missed it, he would have to wait months more for a new appointment to be scheduled. After trying to negotiate his way out of the polling station for a lengthy period of time, he says he felt he had no choice but to use force. So he kneed the man in the groin, he tells me – a considered decision, made because, as an ex-boxer, he felt it would be unfair to use his hands.

“What he hasn’t done in his statement is put things in context,” Terry claims. “It’s a bit like someone jumping out in front of your car, then complaining that you’ve run them over.”

His defence against the charge of removing his ballot paper is simply that it is not a criminal offence, he continues. He has been charged with removing the slip ‘fraudulently’, but all he intended to do was take it home. He has done it ‘five or six times’ before and he keeps the papers in his house. He can find no law which states that it is illegal to take your ballot paper home and keep it. After all, the Government does not prosecute the many thousands of people every year who sign up for postal votes, receive ballot papers in the mail and then fail to use them.

But what people might struggle to comprehend, I suggest, is why it was so important to Terry that he be able to take his ballot paper home in the first place. What was the point?

The answer lies in his political studies and his subsequent activism, he says.

“My politics are liberal,” he explains. Until the mid-1990s, he was active within the Labour Party, but he began to lose faith when Tony Blair ‘started taking the party in a direction I didn’t think was right’. Viewing the Liberal Democrats as the new left-wing party, he migrated there for a while and was even selected as a prospective parliamentary candidate in 1997, but stood down after being falsely accused of fraudulently claiming a student loan (he was acquitted at trial). Soon after, he lost his faith in the Lib Dems as well.

“During this time, I was doing a politics degree and then a Master’s, where I was studying the reasons why people vote the way they do. I started to become aware that there are so many people that don’t vote, and the people who don’t vote are often denigrated by people that do. People assume it’s through apathy, but I thought it might be antipathy. I started to think that we should have a ‘None of the Above’ box. Which is not an idea I created. Far from it. But then I started thinking that if they wouldn’t give us that box, maybe there could be a party called ‘None of the Above’.”

Initial enquiries determined that the Electoral Commission had a rule specifically banning parties from using the name, but he managed to get around it by calling his party NOTA. He debuted the party in a by-election in Norwich, where Anne Fryatt stood under his new banner.

“I done about £6,000 on that,” he says. “We got a few people canvassing for us but one of them turned around and said that by campaigning, None of the Above was effectively becoming one of the above. I thought that was a good point.”

After that, he went to Deed Poll, officially registered his name as ‘None of the Above X’, and stood under his news name in the 2010 general election, in the South Basildon and East Thurrock seat. He later contested a few local elections, but never campaigned and only secured a small proportion of votes.

But what if he hadn’t, I ask? What if he’d won? And what if that happened all over the country? What if he got his wish for a None of the Above option, and then None of the Above won a general election? Wouldn’t that just be anarchy?

“Well,” he laughs. “You shouldn’t really ask me that question. You should ask that to Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn. Because what that suggests is that our sort of democracy is a sham. It’s not a democracy. We should be given the opportunity to express our apathy or our antipathy.”

Presently, he says, the public has a choice between voting for a party – none of which they may like – or being denigrated as a non-voter.

“None of the Above should be an option on your ballot paper. Because at the moment it’s like having a choice between being run over by a train or run over by a bus. I don’t want neither.”

This is why he started taking his ballot papers home, he says. After a while, contesting elections ‘was getting expensive’, so he found a new way to protest.

“It’s about withholding your consent,” he explains. “If I remain silent – as most people do in local elections, for example, where only about a third of people vote – that silence is taken as consent. But there is no way to do a protest vote, because if your spoil your ballot paper, it’s only interpreted as one of two things; void for having chosen too many options, or void on grounds of uncertainty. The message I’ve written on my ballot paper might not be uncertain at all. But if I write down, ‘I ain’t voting for anyone’, that doesn’t get registered. It goes down as void on grounds of uncertainty.”

Terry doesn’t want to not exercise his right to vote, he says, but at the same time, there is nobody he wants to vote for. Therefore, for several years he has attended his polling station, had his name ticked off so he counts towards the turn-out figure, but then left without casting his ballot.

In two weeks’ time, he will take his argument to Southend Magistrates’ Court, he says, and fight to prove its validity. The timing is apt, as the trial will be held exactly one week after polling day in the Basildon Council elections.

“The ironic thing is, this time we’ve got a postal vote,” says Debbie. “So they’ve actually sent our ballot papers to our house.”

Thursday, May 10, 2018

I arrive at Southend Magistrates’ Court at around 9.30am. Terry’s case is listed at 10am in Court 3, but there’s no sign of him yet. According to the court list which arrived at the YA office yesterday afternoon, it is one of nine cases listed in the courtroom today, eight of which are trials and all of which are listed at 10am. The court list includes time estimates for each trial. Seventeen hours of trials are listed in Court 3. A typical court sits for six hours a day.

This seemed like it must be a printing error, so I called the Essex magistrates’ courts headquarters yesterday afternoon to query it. No error, they said; the powers-that-be take a dim view of any court time being ’wasted’. Therefore, the latest diktat is that it’s better for a courtroom to be massively oversubscribed than to sit empty for half an hour. The ’good news’, headquarters informed me, was that Terry’s trial was one of three which had been marked as ’priority’ cases. The bad news, I soon discerned from the list, was that those three ’priority’ cases alone added up to nine hours. So if they lasted as long as predicted, at least one of them would not be heard.

Shortly before 10am, I see Terry arrive down the corridor and dart straight into a side room for a meeting with his barrister. He is being represented today by Greg Olphert, from Article 6 chambers. The pair were introduced by one of Article 6’s clerks, a former RAF soldier who remembered Terry, who is ex-navy, from time spent together at army boxing events. He emerges, grinning, a short while later and heads towards me.

“They’ve dropped the charge of taking the ballot paper,” he beams. “So they know that what I was doing was lawful.”

I ask him whether he thinks facing the assault charge alone will be better or worse.

“I think it’s good. The way I see it is that they were like two weak cards holding each other up. Now one of them is gone.”

He’s also buoyed by having just learned his case will be heard not by a panel of magistrates, but by a district judge, who he thinks will give him a fairer hearing.

As the waiting game begins, Terry chuckles that he was thinking earlier about how this is the fifth time he has stood trial. But if you average it out over almost 60 years, he contends, that’s only one every 12 years, which isn’t so bad.

I know of four of those trials: the magistrates’ hearing over his alleged failure to wear a seatbelt, his trial over the shooting of his former manager Frank Warren, his trial for supposedly making a fraudulent student loan application, and today’s case. But what was the fifth?

“Removal and theft of a wheel clamp,” he laughs. “That was the first one, I think.”

On that occasion, Terry represented himself and won. In fact, he has always emerged an innocent man – albeit, in the seatbelt case, only after taking it to appeal. But will today leave him five-for-five? He seems relaxed and confident.

The first trial in Court 3 overruns and as lunchtime nears, Terry, Debbie and a friend, here to offer moral support, have been sitting on the painfully uncomfortable metal benches in the corridor for more than three hours – as have I.

Terry grimaces: “If I didn’t have a barrister here, I would have just gone home by now – even though I know that would end up with me getting lifted and taken to jail – just to make the point; it’s not on.”

His barrister Greg finally hears confirmation at around 12.50pm that Terry’s case will be the first heard after lunch. With that, Terry and co head off for a Tapas lunch and say they’ll see me at 2pm.

After an extremely brief opening, prosecutor Simon Bravery calls his first witness – Carl Sayonas, the man Terry kneed in the groin last May 4. On the day in question, Mr Sayonas testifies, another member of staff alerted him to the fact that a man called Terry Marsh wanted to remove his ballot paper from the polling station.

“I asked him to step to one side and explained the situation to him,” he says. Asked what his understanding had been at that time as to the rules on removing ballot papers, he tells the court: “We were just told that they were not allowed to remove the paper and if we needed any further help or assistance, we should call the electoral office, which I did on the day.”

That day, while Terry waited, Mr Sayonas called the council’s democratic services department, who he claims confirmed that ballot papers could not be removed from a polling station. He then handed his mobile phone to Terry so they could tell him the same thing. Terry evidently interpreted the person on the phone’s response differently and, upon handing the phone back, said he’d had his position verified and was now leaving.

“There was a commotion between Mr Marsh and myself,” says Mr Sayonas. “He wasn’t happy with the situation... He was agitated. Upset. He seemed to think he knew the rules and regulations better than what he was being informed about and it was making his temperament quite rude and abrupt.”

Terry tried to leave, but Mr Sayonas stood in the doorway.

“Why?” asks Mr Bravery.

“To prevent him leaving with the ballot paper,” says Mr Sayonas.

As he blocked Terry’s exit, Terry twice pushed his chest into him, Mr Sayonas says, which he took as ’a sign of aggression’.

“I kept my hands by my side. I was told you should never raise your hands because it could be misconstrued and the person may think you’re going to do something.”

Then, he says, Terry kneed him in the groin.

“I went on the floor in pain. He stepped over me and he left the building.”

Mr Sayonas recalls crying out, ’Get the police’, then getting back on his feet and chasing Terry out of the building, ’concerned about him getting out of the polling station with the ballot paper’.

“Did you do anything to antagonise or provoke Mr Marsh on that occasion?” asks Mr Bravery.

“I don’t think that I did,” Mr Sayonas replies.

With that, his direct evidence is over and it is time for Mr Sayonas to be cross-examined by Mr Olphert.

“At what point did you stand in the doorway to prevent Mr Marsh from exiting the building?” he asks.

“During the conversation. He went to leave.”

Why did he try to block him?

“He was breaking the law by taking the ballot paper off the premises... He was about to commit an offence.”

“What powers do you have to stop anyone leaving that building?”

“I can’t answer that without going and looking it up,” says Mr Sayonas.

“But nonetheless, you took it upon yourself to stand in the doorway,” Mr Olphert replies.

He then questions Mr Sayonas about his claim that he kept his hands by his sides. Is he sure that’s true?

“I may have raised them a half foot,” he concedes – in order to block the doorway. “But I never raised them above my waist.”

When Terry kneed Mr Sayonas in the groin, says Mr Olphert, “your intention was to still prevent him from leaving that room, wasn’t it?”

“You were restricting him freedom to leave that room.”

“Within reason,” says Mr Sayonas. “If he had surrendered the paper, I would have stood to the side and allowed him to leave the room.”

Other people were still entering the polling station, he adds.

“So it was Mr Marsh in particular you were blocking?” asks District Judge John Woollard, presiding over the hearing.

Mr Olphert continues to quiz Mr Sayonas over his blocking of the exit until, his race reddening, Mr Sayonas shouts, “I fail to see how that’s relevant to him committing an assault on me!”

“The truth of the matter,” Mr Olphert responds, “is that you have overstepped the mark.”

“Not in my eyes,” says Mr Sayonas.

“You have no power to prevent anyone leaving that polling station,” Mr Olphert says. “And as it turns out, you were unlawfully blocking his exit.”

His evidence over, Mr Sayonas briefly leaves the courtroom, then returns and sits in the public gallery. Next up is Susan Shadrake, who had been helping to run the polling station on the day in question. She had been on a 10-minute break, she testifies, but election rules meant she was not allowed to leave the polling station, so she simply sat in a chair across the room. From there, she witnessed Terry enter, collect his ballot paper and then attempt to leave.

Mr Sayonas was ’extremely polite’ in telling Terry he could not leave with his ballot paper, she says. Terry replied with ‘words to the effect of, you can’t stop me, it’s my property’.

Asked to describe Terry’s manner, she replies: “It was very difficult to tell because his back was to me and his voice was low. But he seemed very determined to leave the building and that nothing was going to stand in his way.”

While Mr Sayonas called the electoral office, Mrs Shadrake testifies, she engaged him in conversation to try to stop him from leaving.

“I did ask Mr Marsh why he was doing this and again he repeated to me that he had looked it up in the law and it was his right to do so.”

They didn’t want Terry to leave because, “All of us were under the belief, because it was our instruction, that ballot papers had to be cast in the official polling station and ballot papers were not allowed to leave the building.”

After Terry spoke to the electoral office, “he handed the phone back and then said words to the effect of he was leaving and nobody was going to stop him. At that point, the presiding officer stood in front of Mr Marsh and said, ’Sir, I can’t allow you to leave with the ballot paper’. Well, there followed what I can only describe as a sort of dance between the presiding officer and Mr Marsh, with Mr Marsh trying to get around Mr Sayonas. At no time was there any contact between them until the point when, after, I would suppose, a couple of minutes of ducking and weaving side to side, Mr Marsh sharply brought his knee up into the presiding officer’s groin. The presiding officer cried out with pain, doubled over and Mr Marsh left the building.”

Cross-examined by Mr Olphert, Mrs Shadrake recalls Mr Sayonas having his arms ’outstretched downwards’, in an effort to block the door. Asked whether there was any contact between Terry and Mr Sayonas, she testifies: “The only contact was the actual point where Mr Marsh brought his knee sharply up. Until then, there was no contact whatsoever.”

In her witness statement, Mr Olphert points out, Mrs Shadrake said: “I wouldn’t say he was using full power in the knee, but there was a definite connection.” Today she has said he did it ’sharply’.

“He could have done it a lot more powerfully,” she clarifies. “But it was powerful enough.”

Was it powerful enough to cause Mr Sayonas to fall to the floor, he asks?

“He doubled over. He did not fall to the floor.”

Next up is another polling station staffer from the day, Amanda Downes.

Asked to describe Terry’s behaviour, she says, “It was okay at first, but after that he was quite agitated. He just said that it was his vote and his right.”

Mr Sayonas was a ‘large, well-built man’, she says. He ‘almost filled’ the double doors into the polling station. Asked why he was stood in the doorway, she agrees he was ‘attempting to block Mr Marsh from leaving the building’.

Her evidence is short, offering little in the way of new detail, and Mr Olphert has only a few questions for her.

“When you say that Mr Marsh lifted his knee to the groin of Mr Sayonas, at that point, did Mr Sayonas fall to the ground?”

“No,” she says. “No. He just doubled over. He didn’t fall to the ground.”

“Prior to the knee going into the groin of Mr Sayonas, did you see any other physical contact between Mr Marsh and Mr Sayonas?”

Mr Olphert is finished and the prosecution rests.

Terry would have arrived at the polling station between 4pm and ten-past, he says after taking the stand. He specifically remembers leaving his home shortly before 4pm because he was on his way to a hospital appointment and had deliberately calculated how much time he would need to go to the polling station on his way. He entered the polling station, collected his ballot paper and turned to leave, but became aware of a commotion behind him. He turned around to discover it was being directed at him. Mr Sayonas was telling him he couldn’t leave with his ballot paper.

Why was he so intent on leaving with his ballot paper, Judge Woollard enquires? Terry responds by explaining in some detail the rationale. He has done this repeatedly in the past, he adds, and has always been permitted to do so. Mr Olphert enters into evidence photographs of Terry at home with some of his collection of ballot papers, from local, general and European elections.

“We had a discussion about the rights and wrongs of taking the ballot paper out of the polling station,” he says of May 4, 2017, “and we couldn’t reach an agreement. I was quite satisfied with my position but he did suggest that they phone democratic services – but not for my benefit. I thought it was for his benefit, to check that it was okay.”

When Mr Sayonas turned the phone over to Terry, he testifies, he complained to the person at the electoral office Mr Sayonas’s ’belligerent, aggressive, threatening’ behaviour, and said the detention at the polling station was making him late for an important hospital appointment.

“She [the lady on the phone] said, ’If you bring your ballot paper home, you won’t be able to bring it back’,” Terry tells the court. “She said I would be able to take it home, but I wouldn’t be able to bring it back and cast my vote. With that, satisfied as to my position, I then returned the phone to Carl Sayonas.”

Terry tried to leave, he testifies, “but he stepped across me, in my path.”

“What was going through your mind?” asks Mr Olphert.

“What was going through my mind was that he wasn’t going to allow me to leave, bearing in mind he had previously intercepted me.”

Every time Terry stepped left, Mr Sayonas stepped in front of him, he claims. Every time he stepped right, the same thing happened.

“He wouldn’t let me out,” he says. “I had tried everything that was reasonable, so I felt that I was entitled to use reasonable force to try to extricate myself from the situation.”

He assessed his options, he says. As an ex-boxer, he knew he could not use his fists against Mr Sayonas. “I’m also a slighter man and couldn’t get involved in a wrestling match. So I was a bit restricted as to what I could do to aid my escape. So I brought my knee up.”

“On a scale of one to ten, with one being the least, how much force would you say you used?”

“Say a five. But the purpose of it was to debilitate him momentarily. The response I got was satisfying. He said, ’Call the police, he’s kneed me in the balls’. It was reassuring that he was able to speak, because as a boxer I’ve been hit below the belt and it’s not a situation where you want to articulate anything.”

It was ‘comforting’ to hear Mr Sayonas cry ‘Get the police’, Terry adds, “because if he was really hurt, he would say, ‘Call an ambulance’.” This reinforced his belief that his force had been reasonable.

After leaving, he went to the hospital. Whilst there, waiting for his appointment, he posted a status update on Facebook for fellow ’None of the Above’ enthusiasts, detailing what had occurred. In the following days, he wrote a letter of complaint to the council, saying he had been ’unlawfully detained and falsely imprisoned’ at the polling station. The council never replied.

Cross-examining, Mr Bravery tells Terry that Mr Sayonas’s job was to maintain order at the polling station.

“Yes, within the rules of the Electoral Commission and the local authority,” says Terry.

And Mr Sayonas informed Terry that he was not allowed to leave with the ballot paper, says Mr Bravery.

“Well he was wrong,” says Terry.

“He was acting under supervision,” says Mr Bravery.

“They were wrong,” says Terry.

“He was enforcing the rules of the polling station.”

“I don’t believe he was.”

In truth, Terry was lashing out in anger, Mr Bravery suggests.

“I never lost my temper,” Terry replies.

“You were perfectly calm?”

“It was a considered and deliberate choice?”

“It was a considered choice. I did it to debilitate him momentarily so I could make my escape.”

“You’ve told the court it was your intention to debilitate,” Mr Bravery says.

“Yes, in a reasonable way.”

“In your view, kneeing him in the groin was a reasonable way?”

“Yes. Being a boxer, throwing a punch would be excessive. Wrestling would not be sufficient. It was the lesser evil.”

The real lesser evil would simply have been to hand the ballot paper back, says Mr Bravery.

“But it’s my democratic right,” says Terry.

“Whether you were right or he was right, it was a way of solving the situation… Another way of solving it would have been to ring the police,” says Mr Bravery.

“No, because I had a hospital appointment to get to,” says Terry.

“You could have stood your ground, rung the police and told them to help your release from the polling station.”

“No, because my order of priorities was the hospital appointment. It was unfortunate that I had to resort to that, but I made that decision and I consider it to be reasonable force. He wasn’t passive. He was very theatrical and he was digging his heels in.”

But he could have escaped by giving back the ballot paper, Mr Bravery repeats.

“So do you blame someone who gets mugged as well?” Terry replies. “And say, ’Well, you should have given them your Rolex watch and then you wouldn’t have got mugged’? It takes two to tango. I was put in a position where violence had to be resorted to. I was being held against my will.”

“He was simply doing his job, wasn’t he?” asks Mr Bravery.

“The Nuremberg defence,” says Terry.

“This is a local election,” interjects Judge Woollard. “Let’s keep things in proportion.”

“You assaulted somebody doing his public duty and serving the public,” says Mr Bravery.

“He exceeded his powers, as I’m given to understand it, and he was stopping me from exercising my democratic right,” says Terry.

He reiterates: “Kneeing him in the balls, to use his words, was the least bad option to enable me to make my escape.”

The least bad option, insists Mr Bravery, was to simply comply with Mr Sayonas’ request.

“They probably said that to Rosa Parks as well, when she refused to get off the bus,” says Terry.

Assault trials are the ‘bread and butter’ of the magistrates’ court system, says Judge Woollard, but this is a ‘very unusual’ case. Following the testimony, he asks each side for their legal arguments, taking them in stages; did Terry have the right to remove the ballot paper, did Mr Sayonas have a right to block his exit, and did Terry use reasonable force.

Mr Bravery says Mr Sayonas was ‘entitled to investigate’ the reasons for Terry wanting to remove his ballot, as if his intentions were fraudulent then it was an offence.

“The crown say that the office, in the circumstances, would be entitled to act proportionately. What happened on this occasion was no more than that.”

Terry’s actions were ‘unreasonable and disproportionate’, he continues: “He was not in any threat of danger.”

“Our case is quite simple,” responds Mr Olphert. “Mr Marsh believed he was correct in removing that ballot. Mr Sayonas, we say, acted well outside his compass as presiding officer in any event by preventing Mr Marsh from leaving.”

This was ‘reckless restraint of a victim’s freedom of movement from a particular place’, he says.

“False imprisonment doesn’t require a physical restraint. The fact that one is prevented from leaving is sufficient. We say Mr Marsh, conscious of his impending hospital appointment, was being prevented from leaving. He believed, in all the circumstances, he was acting reasonable in order to effect his exit, having been unlawfully detained or falsely imprisoned. We say Mr Sayonas didn’t have that clarity of thought to recognise that he was wrong. Armed with that knowledge, Mr Marsh attempts to leave and his path is blocked on more than one occasion. This isn’t a case where Mr Sayonas has said, ‘You may not leave’, and stood passively. He has actively thwarted the attempts of Mr Marsh to leave that premises.”

Terry was faced by a ‘larger, well-built man’ blocking the doorway.

“Mr Marsh recognises that you have to be reasonable, and that is the thought process he went through. He took a conscious decision to lift his knee.”

Pointing out the discrepancies between Mr Sayonas’s testimony and the other witnesses – about Terry bumping chests with him and about falling to the floor after being kneed – Mr Olphert adds: “I would respectively suggest this is an embellished account; Mr Sayonas recognising he’s gone way beyond the compass of his role and has no power to detain anyone.”

After briefly summing up the facts in the case, Judge Woollard initially appears to side with Terry, finding that he did not commit a criminal offence in removing his voting slip from the polling station.

“It is not a criminal offence simply to remove the ballot paper,” he says. “It’s only if it’s done fraudulently. I’m quite clear that’s not what Mr Marsh was trying to do and indeed, the crown have offered no evidence on that charge alleging fraud.”

But, he adds, it could be considered theft. Going forward, Terry will have to investigate whether the ballot paper becomes his property when it is handed over, or whether it is simply loaned to him for the purpose of making it, and then remains the property of the Electoral Commission. If the latter, the judge warns, Terry could find himself back in court on a theft charge if he removes his ballot paper again.

In a second blow, Judge Woollard finds Terry’s actions were not reasonable.

“Mr Marsh had two other alternatives available to him, neither of which he explored,” he says.

The first was to simply hand back the ballot paper, then pursue a formal complaint against Mr Sayonas after the fact. The second was to call the elections office or the police and seek some sort of intervention.

“Mr Marsh was acting in a way that was unnecessary, to prove a point,” the judge continues. “He kneed Mr Sayonas in the groin. That was disproportionate. That was a course of action he did not need to take. Mr Marsh, in those circumstances, is not, in my view, entitled to rely upon self-defence. On that basis, I’m satisfied that he is guilty of the offence.”

He orders Terry to pay a £600 fine, £100 compensation to Mr Sayonas, £620 prosecution costs and a £60 victim surcharge – totalling £1,380.

Outside court, Terry seems slightly dazed. Earlier, he had been so confident of his chances – particularly upon hearing his fate would be determined by a judge, not a panel of magistrates.

“I must admit, I’m a bit gobsmacked,” he says. “It was comforting to hear that it is not against the law to take your ballot paper home, and in that sense I’m pleased that I’ve come to court to argue that point and the prosecution have dropped that charge.

“However, it is disappointing that as a consequence of exercising my democratic right, I found myself having to fight my way out of a polling station, using what I still contend was reasonable force, and I now find myself at the short end of an unreasonable verdict.”