A judge said boundary disputes 'bring out the worst' in people, as he quashed the conviction of a man said to have harassed his neighbours.

John Weiniger, 73, was found guilty at Oxford Magistrates’ Court last year of criminal damage and harassing surgeons James and Samantha Miller.

His dispute with his Mollington neighbours concerned a 'two or three inch' slice of land between the properties that he claimed belonged to him but which now lay behind next door's fence.

READ MORE: 'Wheelie bin harassment' case to be appealed

Under the cover of darkness, the pensioner was said to have dug up the Millers’ flowerbed, tossed turf over a wall into their garden, dragged the couple’s dustbins down the road and put his own wheelie bins in their place.

He appealed the convictions to the crown court last year.

But on Friday (February 10), Weiniger’s barrister Richard Davies told Judge Michael Gledhill KC that the two-day appeal hearing was no longer required.

The Crown Prosecution Service, after consulting the victims and the police officer in charge of the case, accepted that the convictions could be quashed as long as Weiniger agreed to abide by a restraining order banning him from contacting his neighbours, ‘interfering’ with their CCTV or taking photographs or ‘recording’ the couple.

“This court’s time is better suited, we all see, with perhaps more serious matters than this,” Mr Davies said for the appellant. The two-day hearing, which would take place in front of a circuit judge and two magistrates, would involve a lot of 'looking through various maps', he said.

Judge Gledhill, who as a senior criminal barrister more commonly dealt with gangland murders than land grapples, told the court: “During my time at the bar I was involved in a number of boundary disputes, as they’re often called, usually over small pieces of land between two adjacent properties.

“They always end disastrously for all parties involved; sometimes huge amounts of money spent on arguing about a four-inch strip of land down the side of the garage or something of that nature.

“It’s also my experience that boundary disputes bring out the worst [in] human beings.”

Imposing a restraining order ‘seems to me to be the best possible way of dealing with it as long as both parties realise what the consequences would be if there is any breach of the restraining order’, he added.

Mr Davies, for Weiniger, said the implications of breaching a restraining order – which carries a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment – had been explained to his client. There had been no breaches of the order imposed last January.

The defendant spoke only to confirm his name at the start of the hearing and to tell the judge: “I have never hurt anyone in my life. I was attacked.”

Judge Gledhill quashed the earlier convictions, imposed the new restraining order and refused an application by his lawyers for Weiniger's costs to be paid out of public funds.

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This story was written by Tom Seaward. He joined the team in 2021 as Oxfordshire's court and crime reporter.  

To get in touch with him email: Tom.Seaward@newsquest.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter: @t_seaward