If a Tree Falls

Cutting down a tree is sometimes necessary and sometimes not. But what about when the act seems cruel? Is it a crime? What kind of crime? What’s the worth of a tree—and of that tree’s meaning to a country? If these questions seem weighty, trust that Rosa Lyster’s fascinating Harper’s feature about a trial that explores them is anything but. Absurdity leavens the proceedings, and the result is one of the most surprising (and enjoyable) pieces I’ve read this year.

Given the public fervor about the case, the state’s decision about how to handle it should not have been a surprise. I was, nevertheless, surprised. A senior High Court judge, Justice Christina Lambert, had been appointed—High Court judges deal with only the most serious and complicated trials in England and Wales. Many of Lambert’s recent cases have involved grave crimes, of the sort that society considers unthinkable. In 2024, she was one of three senior judges appointed to consider the appeal of Lucy Letby, the pediatric nurse convicted of the murder of seven babies. The year before, Lambert had jailed a father for killing his two-month-old son. Richard Wright, the prosecutor appointed in the Sycamore Gap trial, had argued at least two cases before Lambert in the recent past. One involved the rape and murder of a young woman, the other the abduction and murder of a seven-year-old girl. Even at the start of the trial, there was talk of a prison sentence if the two men were found guilty. According to Sarah Dodd, the tree lawyer, it would be the first time anyone in the United Kingdom had gone to prison for cutting down a single tree.