AN ENGINEER who admitted posting “burn any hotels with those scruffy bastards in it” on social media during last summer’s riots has been released from prison after a mistake by prosecutors.
Joseph Haythorne was due to be sentenced on Tuesday for the comment, which was posted just as violence erupted outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Rotherham.
On Monday, Sheffield Crown Court heard that the offence Haythorne was charged with – publishing material intended to stir up racial hatred – requires permission from the Attorney General before charges can be brought, and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) did not get permission in his case due to an “oversight”.
Judge Jeremy Richardson, the Recorder of Sheffield, said any court proceedings up to now were “a nullity” and quashed Haythorne’s conviction.
The 26-year-old, who had been remanded in custody on Friday ahead of his sentencing, was released from prison and told to appear at Sheffield Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday for “the whole process to start again”.
Judge Richardson told him: “I am sorry about this. I am not best pleased, you have been detained, worse still, you were expecting to be sentenced tomorrow and I can’t sentence you tomorrow.
“If on Wednesday consent has been obtained, the proceedings will be starting all over again.”
On Friday, the court heard Haythorne posted the comment on X/Twitter, at lunchtime on August 4, 2024, just as an anti-immigration demonstration outside the Holiday Inn Express, near Rotherham, South Yorkshire, began to descend into rioting.
More than 60 officers were injured in the violence that afternoon as hundreds of people bombarded police and the hotel with missiles.
At one point, rioters set fire to a bin against a fire door of the hotel, which had 240 asylum seekers inside as well as more than 20 staff, and some broke into the building.
Laura Marshall, prosecuting, told Sheffield Crown Court on Friday that Haythorne’s post from an anonymised account, which was viewed by 1100 people before he deleted it, included a link to a now-deleted post by the “perhaps divisive figure” activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson.
She said the defendant’s full post read: “Go on Rotherham. Burn any hotels with them scruffy bastards in it.”
Marshall said the case had some similarities with the case of Lucy Connolly, who was jailed last year for 31 months after she posted on X: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care … if that makes me racist so be it.”
Bianca Brasoveanu, defending Haythorne, said he posted the comment in a “momentary lapse of judgment which he regrets every day”.
