Following the conviction of 18 individuals who engaged in a bloody Stockholm drug war, Sweden's Court of Appeal has ruled that due to a lay judge's membership of a police board that previously discussed the case, he should be considered biased and the case should be sent for re-trial. Former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde sees clear parallels with the TPB trials and intends to file for a fresh investigation into the earlier bias accusations against three judges with the aim of getting a re-trial.

At a cost of around 200 million kronor, the Södertälje case is believed to be one of Sweden’s largest and most expensive criminal prosecutions ever.

It involved the “Södertälje Network”, a criminal gang of between 75 and 100 Syrians said to have waged a campaign of violence and murder in an area south west of Stockholm with the aim of controlling the drugs trade.

In December 2009 a member of a rival “X-Team” gang was executed at a gambling club. A retaliatory 2010 attack on the claimed leader of the Södertälje Network led to more violence, including the gunning down of a footballer and his brother with automatic weapons.

This August, after a trial lasting six months, the 31-year-old leader of the Södertälje Network was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, kidnapping, extortion and a string of other offenses. A total of 17 other defendants were also convicted.

The case went to appeal but instead of issuing a ruling the Svea Court of Appeal ordered a re-trial after a conflict of interest was discovered. A lay judge in the trial had been a member of the Södertälje police board (police management unit) while the trial was taking place.

As a member of the police board the Court of Appeal believed that it would have been difficult if not impossible for an outsider to believe that the lay judge had not been under the influence of police opinions due to involvement in on-going board discussions about the trial.

So how does this retrial decision affect The Pirate Bay case?

“In our case it was ten thousand times worse of course. It wasn’t JUST a lay-juror, it was TWO lay-jurors AND the judge, as you know,” former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak.

After the initial Pirate Bay trial the objectivity of Judge Tomas Norström was examined due to his ties to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups. The Court of Appeal later ruled that this had not influenced the verdict.

The objectivity of the lay jurors set to appear in the trial appeal was also called into question when it was revealed that they too were members of pro-copyright groups. Ulrika Ihrfelt was a member of the Swedish Copyright Association (SFU) and Christina Boutz a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (SFIR).

The bias accusations against Ihrfelt and Boutz went all the way to the Supreme Court leading to a ruling that they were indeed fit to handle the appeal. Due to the legal system nothing could be done about the decision in the case of Judge Tomas Norstrom, despite him being a member of the same copyright groups.

So, in the light of the ruling in the Södertälje Network case, where the lay judge was a member of the Södertälje police board and could be viewed as discussing the case outside the trial, Peter Sunde believes that the same could be true of Ihrfelt, Boutz and Norstrom due to their memberships of pro-copyright (and by extension anti-Pirate Bay) groups.

“With the outcome of this newer case, we think that we have proof that the person who decided that our case was not unfairly treated, was wrong and himself biased,” says Sunde.

Håkan Hydén, Professor in Sociology of Law at Lund University says the issue of bias in The Pirate Bay case is more obvious but explains that just being a member of a police board isn’t necessarily a clear indication of bias.

“Bias is much more obvious in the TPB case since the legally trained JUDGE was a member of an interest organization for intellectual property rights. In the Södertälje case and the others coming up [see notes below] it´s a question of being a member of the [police board] for one of the laymen,” Hydén explains.

“That [membership alone] doesn´t constitute bias based on interest. The police have a function to investigate criminal cases and in that capacity look for facts speaking both for and against the accused. The argument about bias must then be based on the idea that [the lay judge] via the [police board] gained information about the case which might affect his or her objectivity.”

Peter Sunde believes that membership of a pro-copyright group could indeed affect a judge’s objectivity and intends to pursue an investigation.

“We’re going to file for a re-evaluation of the biasness in our court cases – both of them,” he concludes.

Potential conflicts of interest in court cases have been hot news in Sweden recently. In addition to those convicted in the Södertälje Network case, serial killer Peter Mangs also demanded a retrial last week after it was revealed that a lay judge in his case also participated in police board meetings.