Four Middleton FH hunt servants convicted of illegal hunting

3 given pitifully small fines, the other discharged 

Daily Mail  15-8-13   Grisly footage shows blood-thirsty hounds tear fox apart after huntsmen force it from hay bales during illegal hunt     The huntsmen look on as a baying pack on hounds rip a fox to shreds.  And then the horn is sounded: the fox is dead.  This harrowing video has been released after four members of the Middleton Hunt, based in North Yorkshire, pleaded guilty to hunting with hounds.  The men were fined between £85 and £200 each, but despite being caught, investigators doubt their case will have any impact on their future behaviour.
Paul Tillsley, head of investigations at the League Against Cruel Sports, and one of the team that filmed the incident, said:  'While we are pleased with this result, and the admission of guilt from the hunt staff concerned, we doubt it will change their behaviour going forward, or that the hunt themselves will admit illegal hunting and change their ways.' The grisly video shows the terrified fox taking refuge under bales of hay for 25 minutes before hunt staff use terriers, sticks and hounds to force it into the open where the pack of dogs bring it down and tear it apart  A triumphant huntsman then sounds his hunting horn - the traditional call for a kill when hunting was legal.  He then picks up the fox carcass and holds it over the hounds so that they can better attack and 'rag' it. The shocking clip, filmed at Full Sutton, near York, last December, was handed over to police.
Huntsman Tim Holt, of Leavening, North Yorkshire, whipper-in Shaun Marles, of Titley, Hertfordshire, terrierman Lee Martin, of Birdsall, North Yorkshire, and amateur terrierman Brian Cuthbertson of Norton, North Yorkshire, all pleaded guilty to hunting a wild mammal with a dog, at York Magistrates Court. Holt was fined £200, Marles was fined £100 and Martin was fined £100. All three had to pay a £20 surcharge and £85 in costs. Cuthbertson was granted a conditional discharge for 12 months and ordered to pay a £15 victim surcharge and £85 costs.
After the case, Mr Tillsley said: 'We know that many hunts are regularly out there breaking the law, and that's precisely why we have a team of professional Investigators in the field - to capture illegal activity and work with the relevant authorities to bring about prosecutions.  This case is one of several from our work during the last hunting season (2012/13), but a new season is just beginning.  We can only hope that successful cases like this will make hunts think twice about continuing to blatantly flout the law, and start adapting their practices to hunt false trails, leaving animals well alone. This was the will of the British public when the Hunting Act 2004 was passed, but sadly it didn't save this fox.  The successful outcome of this case today is a clear example of how the Hunting Act 2004 can, and does, work when enforced.'
Tim Bonner, director of campaigns for the Countryside Alliance, said: 'The Middleton Hunt has accepted that the fox should have been shot in accordance with the exemption rather than killed by hounds. 'Whilst the Hunting Act remains a ridiculous and illogical law, pleading guilty to minimise the time and money wasted on this case, was the sensible thing to do.'

13-8-13    LACS website    Guilty! Four hunt staff admit illegal hunting after trapped fox flushed to waiting hounds    Case shows Hunting Act 2004 can, and does, work. Four members of the Middleton Foxhounds, a registered fox hunt based at Malton, in North Yorkshire, today pleaded guilty in respect of the illegal hunting of a fox in December 2012, following footage obtained by the League Against Cruel Sports during a hunt meet at Full Sutton, East Yorkshire. Huntsman Tom Holt, Whipper-in Shaun Marles, Terrierman Lee Martin, and Amateur Terrierman Brian Cuthbertson all pleaded guilty in respect of Section 1 of the Hunting Act 2004 – the offence of Hunting a Wild Mammal with a Dog.
The case concerned an incident which was video-recorded by members of the League’s Investigations Team, who saw a fox take refuge from the hunt in a stack of hay bales. The animal was trapped in the bales for over 25 minutes, with hunt staff using terriers, sticks and hounds to force the fox to flee into the open.  Eventually it did attempt to escape, and was brought down and torn apart by the waiting pack of hounds.  The huntsman could then clearly be seen, and was filmed, using his hunting horn to blow the traditional call for a kill (used when hunting was legal).  He then picks up the fox carcass and holds it over the hounds so that they could better attack and ‘rag’ it.
Paul Tillsley, Head of Investigations at the League and one of the team that filmed the incident, stated; ‘Whilst we’re pleased with this result, and the admission of guilt from the hunt staff concerned, we doubt it will change their behaviour going forward, or that the hunt themselves will admit illegal hunting and change their ways. We know that many hunts are regularly out there breaking the law, and that’s precisely why we have a team of professional Investigators in the field – to capture illegal activity and work with the relevant authorities to bring about prosecutions.’  He continued ‘This case is one of several from our work during the last hunting season (2012/13), but a new season is just beginning. We can only hope that successful cases like this will make hunts think twice about continuing to blatantly flout the law, and start adapting their practices to hunt false trails, leaving animals well alone. This was the will of the British public when the Hunting Act 2004 was passed, but sadly it didn’t save this fox. The successful outcome of this case today is a clear example of how the Hunting Act 2004 can, and does, work when enforced.’

Several other papers covered the case including the Daily Express and the Mirror.

POWAperson comments:-    Whilst thoroughly congratulating the LACS on bringing these Middleton hunt servants to book, and acknowledging that the League is doing the best they can in trying to achieve prosecutions, POWA cannot agree with the assertion that the Hunting Act can and does work, at least with respect to organised Hunts. The capturing of such utterly conclusive evidence as in this case is a rare event and, very much more often than not, hunters are able to avoid investigation, prosecution or conviction due to the weak wording and numerous loopholes of the Hunting Act. There simply is no practical means of enforcing this defective legislation against nearly 300 hunts, a large proportion of which we have reason to believe regularly engage in illegal hunting - and there never will be.
There have been getting on for 100,000 hunting days since the Act came into effect, but the number of convictions of organised Hunts remains minuscule. Nor is there evidence that those convictions have had any deterrent effect.  A notable feature of this latest case was the absolutely paltry size of the sanctions. The largest fine was £200, just 4% of the maximum allowed, 2 were £100 [2%] and the other offender got away with just a discharge.  None of the riders who can be seen in the film participating in the illegal hunting were prosecuted.  No thought seems ever to have been given in a case against an organised Hunt to using the powers of confiscation of equipment, dogs and vehicles used in offences - though this happens quite often in cases involving the, largely underclass, lurcher brigade.
But true deterrence will only come when maximum sanctions are harsher, in line with other animal welfare acts, [prison and/or +£20,000 fines] and when the Act is sufficiently strengthened to make enforcement much easier. In the meantime, we do, of course, applaud the brave and arduous work of monitors from whatever organisation - but monitoring alone is never going to achieve the end of organised hunting of wild animals for 'sport'. 
These convictions bring to 334 the number of separate persons from organised Hunts who have, according to POWA records,  been convicted or cautioned since 1990, committing between them at least 782 offences.

2-8-13   Hereford Times     Ross-on-Wye hunt master wins appeal over racist abuse charge     A Huntsman has spoken of his relief after he was cleared of hurling racial abuse at an anti-hunt demonstrator. David Lee Peters, master of the Ross Harriers Hunt, had been found guilty of using a racist term during a hunt at the Pennyfarthing Inn at Aston Crews in January last year. He was fined a total of £720, ordered to pay Ms Hassan £200 compensation and £2,000 in court costs after being found guilty following a trial at Hereford Magistrates’ Court in November. But a panel of judges overturned the verdict at Worcester Crown Court on Tuesday after concluding that there were inconsistencies in the story, which meant there was reasonable doubt. "I am relieved that justice has been done, because it should have been done firstly at Hereford Magistrates’ Court," said Mr Peters, of Castle Brook Kennels, Coughton.

Very low number of stags on Quantocks leads to LACS call for halt to hunts

POWAperson adds:-   The voting figures in the Commons remain stacked against any attempt to repeal the Hunting Act [slightly more so now than at the start of this Parliament] and this is clearly why the 'Indicative Vote' on repeal, promised by David Cameron soon after he became Prime Minister in 2010, has not been actioned and why no date for it has been offered.  The closer the next election comes [22 months and counting] the less likely the Government will surely be to embark on such a highly controversial and unpopular process.
However, the enthusiastic wildlife killer Owen Paterson is now Secretary of State at DEFRA. There are rumours that he is looking at the possibility of amending the Act via Statutory Instrument, a power granted to him by Section 2 of the HA,  to [further] neuter the legislation, rather than try to repeal it.  This, thankfully, is less alarming than it sounds, since Statutory Instruments have to be approved by Parliament in a manner not all that different from a Bill, and it seems very unlikely that he could get away with trying to squeeze  this through on a quiet day, as some seem to fear.
Notwithstanding this, POWA would still not completely rule out some cunning attempt to repeal or neutralise the Hunting Act during this Parliament and we fully endorse the 'Big 3's' call for everyone to make their support for the Act known to their MP, whatever their party or known stance on the issue.  We would, however, have preferred them to adopt a rather more proactive stance, by stating the desirability of not just preventing repeal but of actually strengthening the Act.
POWA has long believed that if and when an attempt at repeal is made it will come with the promise of an 'Independent Hunting Authority' to oversee the 'sport'.  Being the brainchild of the Committee to Repeal the Hunting Act [Chairman: Lord Astor, Cameron's stepfather-in-law (left)] it seems clear that the IHA would be little more than window dressing, with any animal welfare representatives who might agree to serve on it outnumbered by hunting interests, whether overt or covert.  It would have limited powers, and probably little will, to significantly discipline Hunts, even in the most extreme cases [as is already so with the various hunting 'sport's' existing governing bodies].
In addition to the IHA, we would expect them to bring forward a 'Wild Animal Welfare Bill' to replace the Hunting Act. This would be along the lines of the one originally proposed - in a failed attempt to head off  banning legislation - in the early 2000s by the bloodsports-loving Labour peer Lord Donoughue. The turncoat Barrington, now styling himself as 'Animal Welfare Consultant' for the Countryside Alliance [a contradiction in terms, surely?] frequently trumpets this as a final solution to the hunting controversy.
Though perhaps initially and superficially attractive to the uninformed, this Bill is, in reality, a smokescreen.  It would restore the status quo ante and would not render illegal anything that hunters and their henchmen were previously permitted to do to their quarry - that is, pretty well anything they liked, other than the limited number of extreme and highly specific cruelties prohibited by the Wild Mammals Protection Act, 1996. That Act, originating as a Private Members Bill by the Labour backbencher Alan Meale, was only allowed passage by the then BFSS-led Tory majority on condition that anything that might ordinarily occur during hunting activity be excluded from its prohibitions, extending even [truly] to their insistence on the removal of a planned ban on 'torture'.
Prosecuting organised Hunts under such a 'Wild Animal Welfare Act' for 'causing unnecessary suffering' to an individual animal would be, de jure, possible, but, de facto, would prove extraordinarily difficult.  As the RSPCA can testify, the burden of proof required in such cases as it currently applies to domestic and captive animals is very high, generally requiring, among other things, the production of the particular animal to whom the suffering has allegedly been caused, or its corpse, and a full veterinary report unequivocally stating that the animal was caused 'unnecessary' suffering.  The prosecution then has to show that this suffering was caused, without lawful justification, by the actions of accused and, under the 'Wild Animal Welfare Act' they would have to be one or more named hunters.  In practice this would present near insuperable problems.
Since hunting wild animals with dogs for 'sport' would once again be legal, presumably anything that happens ordinarily to the quarry in its course - prolonged chases or being disembowelled by one or more dogs for instance - would not be deemed as 'unnecessary', and only really extreme cruelty cases might then be prosecutable at all.
It seems that the 'corporate' liability of a Hunt, present in the current Hunting Act, would no longer exist. Even this is extremely hard to prove and has been attempted only once [the conviction of the Heythrop] in the eight years of the HA's existence.  Identification evidence to tie individual hunters to breaches of the HA is always crucial, but is very often highly problematic, especially given hunters' apparent readiness to cover for one another.  Several HA prosecutions have foundered on this difficulty, even where it was clear illegal hunting had taken place. Many other potentially sound cases could not be brought at all because the particular perpetrators could not be definitively identified.
Hunting usually takes place in sparsely populated locations and there are generally few, if any, non-hunt witnesses to the hounding of the wild quarry, let alone to its bloody conclusion.  Monitors and sabs can never hope to cover more than a tiny proportion of hunts, and even in cases where blatant illegal hunting is being conducted, they are mostly unable to collect evidence sufficient to mount a prosecution and are often actively prevented from so doing by hunters.  Also, the re-legalisation of hunting wild animals for sport would place monitors and sabs at a significantly greater disadvantage vis-a-vis the hunters than at present, never mind negating the few comprehensive achievements of the Hunting Act, such as the elimination of organised hare-coursing, and the extra weapon it has given the police in prosecuting the 'lurcher brigade', who trespass to conduct their vile activities. 
Anyone even slightly familiar with how organised Hunts actually operate, including common tactics of violence, intimidation, obstruction and theft or destruction of equipment toward anyone who tries to gather evidence of wrongdoing by them, will readily understand that, under such a 'Wild Animal Welfare Act', both the legal and the logistical obstacles to bringing any prosecution, let alone to obtaining a conviction, would be enormous - far greater even than under the present, sadly flawed, Hunting Act.
Even in the unlikely event of a 'Wild Animal Welfare Act' conviction being obtained against some hunter for 'causing unnecessary suffering' to his wild quarry, this would probably have even less deterrent effect on his own or other Hunts than does a conviction under the current HA - and that seems precious little.  They would probably just carry on hunting in exactly the same way, since their chances of being convicted for a similar offence would be minuscule. Any precedent set by the conviction would be unlikely to have much applicability to future cases.  Nor would it be likely to have much influence on the convicted offender who, as now, would be regarded in hunting circles as a 'martyr', would probably have any fine and costs paid for him and would almost certainly retain his position in the Hunt.
Many POWA Associates are highly active monitors who work bravely, tirelessly and unpaid to document and expose wrongdoing by organised Hunts.  They witness breaches of both the spirit and the letter of the law on virtually every outing, but, despite their knowledge, experience, dedication and the enormous number of [wo]man hours expended, the very high evidential burden imposed by the Hunting Act 2004 means they are still only rarely able to collate video evidence adequate to mount successful prosecutions.
In their case, overcoming the near-universal reluctance by the local criminal justice authorities to take on cases against such well-resourced, high-status, defendants proved impossible, which is why they had to ask the RSPCA to take on the Heythrop prosecutions - cases so solid that they eventually resulted in several guilty pleas, despite the hunters' original, outraged denials. Though there have been a couple of successful CPS-handled HA cases in the last few years, recent instances, where other anti organisations have handed over HA cases to the CPS only to see them lost or simply abandoned, are scarcely encouraging.
Attempts by monitors to expose HA breaches and have the law enforced will continue, but it must surely by now be evident to all that the Hunting Act, though much better than nothing, is in many ways unfit for purpose as applied to organised hunting with hounds -  and that it requires significant strengthening to make it both more readily enforceable and a much greater deterrent to the ruthless legion of hunters who are currently willing, and mostly able, to ride roughshod over the will of both Parliament and people.
Legislative means must be found to place 'clear blue water' between what organised Hunts are permitted to do and what they need to do to successfully hunt wild quarry. Because  these margins are currently so close, hunters are, far too often, able still to get away with wilfully chasing and killing wild animals - escaping investigation or prosecution, time after time, by employing the 'accident while trail hunting' defence or citing some other HA loophole.
Strengthening of the Act, together with sterner sanctions [comparable to those already contained in other Animal Welfare legislation], should make it much easier for witnesses and monitors to provide robust testimony of breaches, render the police, CPS and others more willing and able to investigate and successfully prosecute [or, at least, provide them with many less excuses for not doing so], and create a significantly greater deterrent to would-be law breakers. 
POWA is not so naive as to believe that this will be at all quick or easy to achieve, even given a potentially sympathetic future government, but it seems to us essential. We believe it is a goal for which all antis should now begin to campaign, so that the aim of the Hunting Act's promoters - to properly safeguard wild mammals from the enormous suffering caused to them by hunting with dogs for 'sport' - can be much more properly achieved in the, hopefully not too distant, future.
POWA's original ideas on how the Hunting Act needs to be amended to try to achieve these goals can be found on our website, starting here. Developments since have led us to believe that amendments need to be somewhat more extensive and sophisticated than this and we will be publishing revisions in due course. In the meantime, we would welcome constructive dialogue on the subject. Contact us here .