A retired police officer should have a conviction for posting a ‘grossly offensive’ message about Islam on Facebook overturned because it was a ‘satirical’ comment in the vein of Monty Python’s Life of Brian or Private Eye magazine, a court has heard.
While Stephen Gray’s reposting of an image on social media about Islam and the age of consent may have been ‘uncouth, coarse, not nuanced’, he was entitled to make the post as a political expression, his barrister John Beggs KC told an appeal hearing.
Gray, who spent 27 years with Cleveland Police, was convicted at Newton Aycliffe Magistrates’ Court in
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