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The right to legal representation should be similar to the right to healthcare and education, ie not means tested, just free at point of access.
Whilst I do have a lot of sympathy with a lot of the comments being posted here, I do feel the punishment in this case was far too lenient,
I agree, hence the appeal to have the sentence reviewed. Will be interesting how the two appeals play out
Will be interesting how the two appeals play out
Indeed
A case of one guilty, all guilty.
Which I suppose then makes the Derek Bentley sentence perfectly just.
But he was posthumously pardoned, because in that joint venture it was ruled he didn't actually cause the policeman's death, but was party to the burglary.
Would the same not then apply here.
The defence got the three accused of murder off and found guilty of manslaughter which seems like the correct decision to me . I thought that the sentencing was certainly not excessively lenient . With regard to the court costs I think that it is time that we followed the American example and bring in plea bargaining which I know is some way less than perfect but the same could be said of the current system . Plea bargaining can save a massive amount of court time and money and I think that it is quite a pragmatic rout to take with many trials becoming massively complex , time consuming and costly . Awaits flaming .
I haven’t followed the case closely but the question is whether those in the car were aware of the policeman being dragged by their car. Surely there must have been shouting and they still continued driving on.
I can sympathise with his family, went to work one day and didn’t come home. 13 years is nothing for a life, they will be back out when around 30 years old, possibly even sooner.
Surely there must have been shouting and they still continued driving on.
Already driving fast, in the dark, panicking about getting caught. What do you expect they would hear?
Somebody screaming and pleading for his life. They had a choice. To stop or to continue driving.
Not that I'm in any way defending their actions, but there's a school of thought which suggests that he was knocked unconscious pretty rapidly.
I'd like to hope that were true, on a number of levels.
With regard to the court costs I think that it is time that we followed the American example and bring in plea bargaining which I know is some way less than perfect but the same could be said of the current system . Plea bargaining can save a massive amount of court time and money and I think that it is quite a pragmatic rout to take with many trials becoming massively complex , time consuming and costly . Awaits flaming .
Effectively we do (at least in Scotland - I assume it is similar in England). The defence can approach the prosecutor to offer a plea of guilty to a lesser charge, or to a charge with some modification to the wording, or perhaps to an "agreed narration of facts". If the plea is at an early enough stage they might expect a "discount" on their sentence of upto 1/3rd. The difference to the US approach is you don't negotiate the sentence (and indeed the Judge is not party to the negotiations at all). Less likely to be accepted in very high profile cases (the media would love to have made a meal of a deal in this case), and some types of case may just have a policy of not accepting pleas for pseudo-political reasons, or because its difficult for victims or their families to stomach.
Just to correct this. Us criminal legal aid lawyers get paid fixed fees for cases as a rule.
So when cases drag on, our fees don’t increase. We just get paid the same but it takes longer for us to receive that payment!
You don't get to six figure sums on a fixed fee case. I haven't seen the breakdown of what the bills were for, but I'll be amazed if there's no cost in there which a proactive prosecution could have saved the state. I'd also suggest that if there were no court service delays, hold ups or extra work, then its because this was such a high profile case. Of course there are cases at the other end of the scale where you are getting shafted by the system doubly, because the churn dilutes your fees even more - but thats still an indirect cost to the state: it means fewer legal aid solicitors, and more people representing themselves which means less effective case management, longer trials, and probably more appeals, and it even mean that some defence solicitors are poorly prepared at court making it more likely they ask for delay - all false economy, but "its not my budget".
I do feel the punishment in this case was far too lenient,
Leniency of sentence is not the same as correctness of conviction. I think some people are conflating the two. They must be convicted of murder because they should serve a longer sentence. Without access to all of the evidence and only a cursory glance at the details, I do believe that the conviction for manslaughter not murder is correct.
Leniency of sentence is not the same as correctness of conviction. I think some people are conflating the two. They must be convicted of murder because they should serve a longer sentence. Without access to all of the evidence and only a cursory glance at the details, I do believe that the conviction for manslaughter not murder is correct.
Manslaughter is the result of 100 years of the automotive industry convincing us that it's impossible to use a car as a murder weapon. An idea that, ironically enough, the Daily Mail promotes whenever it can.
If the men had been preparing dinner when PC Harper tried to arrest them and they 'accidentally' ran into him whilst still holding their cooking knives then I'm pretty sure the result would not have been manslaughter.
, I do believe that the conviction for manslaughter not murder is correct.
While I'm not happy with it, I agree manslaughter was probably the correct verdict.
But that carries a maximum life sentence. I'd have liked to have seen life sentences with minimum tariffs similar to what they were given, but I don't know if sentencing guidelines preclude that.
Plea bargaining can save a massive amount of court time and money and I think that it is quite a pragmatic rout to take with many trials becoming massively complex , time consuming and costly . Awaits flaming .
English courts do an auto discount if you plead guilty before trial (I think once it starts its tough but could be wrong).
For plea bargaining on a larger scale I am dubious about it after reading about how it has been abused in the US. People are threatened with insanely long sentences and then offered a fairly light plea bargain and have to decide on the gamble of going to court.
I don’t disagree. The conviction is correct. I can’t see how they could have established mens rea from the published details.
Deliberately driving a car at someone is not the same. And that was my original though from the original reports, but subsequent details showed this was far from the case.
The verdict sounded correct, the sentencing wasn't overly lenient. An objective person would come to that conclusion, the wife of the person who was killed may not and the Daily Mail couldn't even spell objective.