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Judge Taylor
Judge member of the UK judiciary.
Deborah Frances Taylor presided over the sentencing for bail violations at Southwark Crown Court on May 1st 2019. At one point, she mistakenly claimed that Assange had been charged in Sweden. After rejecting all of the defence's mitigation arguments, Taylor accused Assange of costing British taxpayers £16 million, mostly referring to expenses from overt and covert surveillance operations by police while Assange resided in the Ecuadorian Embassy. She categorised the bail violation as ‘A1,’ meaning there was a failure to surrender with ‘deliberate attempt to evade or delay justice,’ despite his asylum application from June 2012 clearly stating, “It is not my wish to avoid investigation or indeed trial in Sweden, however unjust I believe the context to date to have been” (para. 47). She sentenced him to 50 weeks in prison, or 47 weeks when accounting for time served since his arrest. This is near the maximum (one year) for this offence.