Barrister fined 250 pounds for giving Nazi salute in court

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/barrister-fined-250-for-giving-nazi-salute-in-court-6clgl30rt

A veteran barrister and former judge has been fined for giving a Nazi salute to magistrates while saying “jawohl” at the end of a criminal trial. Thomas Davidson, who was called to the Bar in 1973 and spent 24 years as an immigration tribunal judge, was fined £250 over an incident last year at Salisbury magistrates’ court. A disciplinary tribunal found that Davidson, who is based at a set of barristers’ chambers in Fleet Street in London, “behaved in a way which was likely to diminish the trust and confidence which the public places in him or in the profession”.

The three-strong panel said in its short report that last year the chairman of the lay bench of magistrates had reprimanded the barrister for invoking a German accent during a criminal trial in which he was representing the defendant. Then, at the end of proceedings, Davidson was found to have looked at the bench and said “Jawohl” while raising his hand in a Nazi salute. The word technically means simply “yes” in German. But is also used in military circumstances as “yes, sir” — and more recently denotes sarcasm. The gesture invoked by the barrister is also known as the Hitler salute or the Sieg Heil salute.

Historians have noted that members of the Nazi party first started greeting Adolf Hitler with the salute — which was said to have originated in the Roman empire — in the early 1920s before it was made compulsory in 1926. It was seen as a sign of loyalty to Hitler. In Hitler’s Table Talk, Hitler himself credited the SS with having given the salute “a soldierly style”. The disciplinary tribunal said that Davidson’s actions were “seriously offensive and discreditable”, and in addition to imposing a fine on the barrister, it ordered him to pay £1,750 in costs.

In addition to his criminal law practice, Davidson is listed as acting in family, personal injury and landlord and tenant cases. He is also listed as an immigration law specialist and is reported to have sat as a tribunal judge between 1992 and 2016. The tribunal’s full decision, which would explain the context of the barrister’s actions, has not yet been published. Davidson has 21 days to appeal the ruling.

snip