Former Manchester City midfielder, Joey Barton, has been sentenced to six months jail term over his unlawful social media post aimed at handlers of a popular football TV show.
Barton, who was convicted for his online rant aimed at broadcaster, Jeremy Vine and TV pundits, Lucy Ward and Eniola Aluko, was also suspended from managerial duties for 18 months, alongside a 200 hour community service and a fee of £23,419 to be paid to the case prosecutors.
The English manager was convicted in November by a jury who held that he crossed the line between free speech and a crime with the six posts he made on social media.
The judge, Andrew Menary, at the Liverpool Crown Court on Monday said, ”Robust debate, satire, mockery and even crude language may fall within permissible free speech. But when posts deliberately target individuals with vilifying comparisons to serial killers or false insinuations of paedophilia, designed to humiliate and distress, they forfeit their protection.
“As the jury concluded, your offences exemplify behaviour that is beyond this limit – amounting to a sustained campaign of online abuse that was not mere commentary but targeted, extreme and deliberately harmful.”
Following a televised FA Cup tie in January 2024 between Crystal Palace and Everton, Barton likened Ward and Aluko in a post on X to the “Fred and Rose West of football commentary superimposing the faces of the two women onto a photograph of the serial murderers.
The former Newcastle player also tweeted that Aluko was in the “Joseph Stalin/Pol Pot category” as she had “murdered hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of football fans’ ears”.
He was also convicted of a post in relation to Aluko in which he wrote: “Only there to tick boxes. DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) is a load of s***. Affirmative action. All off the back of the BLM (Black Lives Matter)/George Floyd nonsense”.
