Former Met PCs lose appeal over offensive messages

Joel Borders (left) and Jonathon Cobban (right) were convicted in 2022 of sharing offensive messages

Two former Metropolitan Police officers who shared "grossly racist, sexist, and misogynistic" messages with Sarah Everard's killer have lost a High Court appeal to overturn their convictions.

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.

Lawyers for the men brought an appeal against their convictions and sentences at the High Court last month.

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".

Westminster Magistrates' Court had heard in November 2022 the officers joked about raping a female colleague, Tasering children and people with disabilities, and displayed racist views in a WhatsApp group chat called "Bottle and Stoppers" in 2019.

Among those in the group was Couzens, who was sentenced to a whole-life term for murdering 33-year-old marketing executive Sarah Everard while he was a serving Met officer in March 2020.

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.

Cobban from Didcot in Oxfordshire was found guilty of three counts of sending grossly offensive messages, while Borders, from Preston in Lancashire, was convicted of five charges.

Appeal 'fundamentally misconceived'

At the hearing on Friday Nicholas Yeo, acting for the two men, told judges 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".

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."

However Jocelyn Ledward KC, acting for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said 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."

In a summary of their decision on Friday, Baroness Carr said the pair "could have no reasonable expectation of privacy" over the messages which "relate to policing actions".

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 lodge an appeal to the Supreme Court.