A women must wait to hear the outcome of a complex legal battle at London’s High Court.
The Crown Prosecution Service challenged Christine Jones’ acquittal at Bedford Magistrates Court on a charge of racism.
At the conclusion of the legal argument on Friday, one of the country’s most senior judges put his decision on hold saying: “I am not going to give a judgement today.
“There are one or two knotty points which I need to be certain of.”
Prosecutors had challenged a decision by Bedford magistrates to acquit the Royal Mail manager accused of a racially aggravated public order offence.
In April last year, the magistrates found that Mrs Jones, of Station Road, Ridgmont, had, during an altercation with her neighbours Alan and Nilufar Lawson, asked the eight-and-a-halfmonth pregnant Mrs Lawson: “So he had to go to what country to buy you and get you pregnant?”.
However, the justices found that the reason she committed the offence was because of animosity towards Mr Lawson after a long-running dispute, and that it was not racially motivated. On Friday, lawyers for the Crown Prosecution Service asked Mr Justice Duncan Ouseley to rule that the magistrates got it wrong.
They say that once the magistrates found Mrs Jones had used racially abusive language, they fell into error in thinking they had to go on to determine the motivation behind it.
At the same time, Mrs Jones is also appealing.
She is challenging the magistrates’ decision to convict her of harassing architectural engineer Mr Lawson between August and November 2008.
She claims that her behaviour, in threatening to paint a garage door blue or pink depending on the sex of the Lawsons’ child, and in reporting Mr Lawson to the police for allegedly spreading rumours about her, did not cross the line and become harassment.
At the trial last April, the court heard that the long-running dispute came to a head on August 10, 2008, when they claimed that the Jones’ car was blocking their driveway.
Kate Chidgey, for Mrs Jones, argued that the magistrates were wrong to convict her client of harassment, arguing that her behaviour did not ‘cross the criminal threshold.’
She argued that the threat of physical action was not directed at Mr Lawson, nor Mr Lawson’s property, but Mrs Jones’ own garage door, and that there was no threat to damage it, only paint it.
She said that this ‘amounts at worst to unpleasant banter’ and added that reporting Mr Lawson to the police did not constitute harassment.
The hearing continues.