Sycamore Gap accused committed ‘arboreal equivalent of thuggery’ for ‘a laugh’

Two former friends accused of cutting down the world-famous Sycamore Gap tree committed the “arboreal equivalent of mindless thuggery,” thinking it would be “a bit of a laugh”, a jury has been told.

The prosecution said Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers realised they “weren’t the big men they thought they were” when they saw the public outrage over the felling of the much-loved Northumberland landmark.

Ground worker Graham, 39, and mechanic Carruthers, 32, are accused of driving overnight from Carlisle to Sycamore Gap during Storm Agnes in September 2023, and cutting the tree down with a chainsaw.

The pair each deny two counts of criminal damage to the sycamore and to Hadrian’s Wall, which was damaged when the tree fell on it.

Making his closing speech to jurors on Wednesday, prosecutor Richard Wright KC said: “From Felixstowe to Falkirk, from Bishop Auckland to Barnstable, up and down the country and across the world, the reaction of all right thinking people to the senseless felling of the Sycamore Gap tree has been one of sadness and anger.

“Who would do such a thing? Why would anyone do such a thing? Take something beautiful and destroy it for no good reason.

“Go to the trouble of causing irreparable and senseless damage to an adornment to the rural landscape of Northumberland, and in the process damage the ancient structure of Hadrian’s wall. Then take away a souvenir of your moronic mission.

“The public indignation, anger and downright disgust has been palpable hasn’t it?

“But, so it appears, that it came as something of a shock to Adam Carruthers.”

Mr Wright reminded jurors that Carruthers had said during his evidence that it was “just a tree” and the reaction was “as if somebody had been murdered”.

“And perhaps that sentiment, that lack of appreciation, actually explains a great deal about these two defendants and about why… neither of them is willing to own up to what they have done,” Mr Wright said.

“Because for all that they must have thought that this was going to be a bit of a laugh, they woke up the morning after and soon realised – as the news media rolled in, as the outrage of the public became clear… it must have dawned on them that they couldn’t see anyone else smiling in there.

“And that far from being the big men they thought they were, everyone else thought that they were rather pathetic.

“Owning up to this arboreal equivalent of mindless thuggery would make them public enemy number one. And neither of them has got the courage to do that.”

Mr Wright said the two men were “in it together from first to last”.

“The odd couple. Two men who did everything together and who, you can be sure, were together this night as well,” he told jurors.

“A team who were in it together from first to last. One to operate the saw and the other to film it. But both equally responsible.”

Mr Wright told the court that a video said to be of the moment the tree was cut down, which was found on Graham’s phone and had been sent to Carruthers, would have been “gold dust” if it had been released.

He said: “And there are only two people in the world who ever had that video on their telephones. Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers.”

Earlier, Mrs Justice Lambert told jurors that both defendants deny they were involved.

Carruthers, she said, claimed he was staying at home in his caravan with his partner and their newborn baby.

Graham claimed he was at his home that night and while he accepted that his Range Rover was driven to the car park nearest to Sycamore Gap and his phone was used to film the tree being felled, he said his co-accused took both.

In his closing speech, Chris Knox, for Graham, said the defendants had fallen out “spectacularly”.

He said Graham was accused of being “stroppy” when answering the prosecution’s questions.

“Does that make him the Sycamore Gap tree murderer?” Mr Knox asked the jury.

“Or does it mean exactly what he said in his interviews with the police – he has been dropped in this?”

Andrew Gurney, defending Carruthers, said Graham had “named Adam Carruthers because he needs a scapegoat”.

He said Carruthers was in the dock “not because he was found at the scene…but because of Daniel Graham’s mobile phone and the words of one man – Daniel Graham, who having found himself in the dock, has reached desperately for a lifeline and tried to throw Adam Carruthers under the bus to save his own skin”.

Mr Gurney said: “Adam Carruthers was not creeping about a national park in the dead of night. He was at home with his partner.”

He added that “it makes no sense that, during this period of his life, he would be doing that,” reminding jurors that Carruthers’s newborn daughter had returned home from hospital just five days earlier.

The trial continues.