Former footballer Joey Barton receives suspended prison term for derogatory social media comments
Ex-Premier League player Joey Barton avoided immediate imprisonment on Monday when he was handed a suspended sentence for highly offensive messages on social media targeting UK broadcaster Jeremy Vine along with pundits Lucy Ward and Eni Aluko.
In the previous month, a jury ruled that Barton had stepped over the boundary from free expression into illegal territory with six messages posted on X, the platform once called Twitter.
During the hearing at Liverpool Crown Court on Monday, Judge Andrew Menary gave Barton a six-month jail term, but suspended it for 18 months.
After a TV-broadcast FA Cup game in January 2024 featuring Crystal Palace versus Everton, he compared the pair Ward and Aluko to the "Fred and Rose West of football punditry" and then edited their faces onto a picture of two of the United Kingdoms most infamous serial killers.
He additionally posted that Aluko, a past England womens team member, fell into the "Joseph Stalin/Pol Pot league" because she had "slain the ears of hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of football supporters".
The jury cleared him on the dictator parallels to Stalin and Pol Pot, plus the Wests comparison for commentary work, yet they deemed the altered image grossly offensive.
Barton faced conviction too for a message about Aluko, who is Black, where he implied her role was solely a diversity appointment.
The 43-year-old with 2.6 million followers on X applied a vile slur hinting that Vine harboured paedophilic inclinations, this came after the television and radio host messaged to ask if Barton endured a "brain injury".
Barton was found guilty for a message alleging Vine had connections to Jeffrey Epstein, nodding to the late American sex offender.
That said, he was acquitted on six additional counts of dispatching grossly offensive digital messages meant to provoke distress or unease from January through March 2024.
In his testimony, Barton asserted he felt targeted by a "political witch hunt" and refuted any motive "to chase clicks and boost his own profile".