It’s a fundamental principle of American jurisprudence that the courts cannot try you twice for the same crime if you have been acquitted. The feds have of course found ways around that, by charging, say, cops who killed someone in the line of duty and been acquitted of using excessive force with federal “hate crimes” charges. Sure, you were found not guilty of murder. But did you use harsh language? Guilty! It’s a shameful practice. but at least in in the US, “double jeopardy” is *usually* the standard. The feds playing tricks is normally reserved for a tiny number of politically explosive cases, where the goal is to have a show trial in order to placate unthinking violent mobs.
Britain, though, seems to not even have that thin and perforated veneer of civilization. If you are charged and acquitted, the courts can appear and charge you again, it seems.
Short form: a man made a cardboard “model” of a building and burned it on a bonfire. That’s it. That’s the crime. He didn’t burn the building itself; the cardboard was his, the bonfire was his, the bonfire was legal and there were no laws against burning cardboard. He was charged with being, essentially, rude, because the building in question was “Grenfell Tower,” a massively badly made high rise building that had recently caught fire and killed a bunch of people. It would be akin to someone in, say, November of 2001 burning a cardboard model of the World Trade Center. Offensive? sure. Criminal? Ummm…. *how?* So not only are actions which harm no one and damage nothing illegal in Britain, the courts can go after you time and again until they get what they want.
