[Closed] Sentencing Guidelines

'happy slapping' should not be the description for what they did!!!

Absolutely shocking case.

I wonder if the lads involved feel like they've had a bit of a result?

I agree with the Mr Haque's son that justice has not been served. The lads were on bail for a similar offence at the time of the incident so that would suggest that they didn't take their actions seriously or the potential punishment associated with the crime they were accused of seriously. I hope that the sentence's will be reviewed but wont hold my breathe.

Because you can't give too much power to individual judges, since they are fallible human beings. Otherwise, we'll end up heading for a Judge Dredd scenario.

The mistake a lot of people make when reading this stuff is to think that there can be one 'right thinking' majority of society that could decide en masse how things should be handled. This is basically the same as mob rule, and is an extremely dangerous situation.

This is why we have the legal system we do.

At the risk of getting a bit Daily Mail on another point - if those kids were white would be talking about 'race hate' crimes? It seems all their victims were asian?

molgrips people are just suggesting that the legal system may also be fallible and special cases, like this, can go outside the guidlines to a higher court with teh judges discretion. Why is this not reasonable?

Very short sentence for the consequences of their actions

EDIT: grum we would be fine they attacked them outside the mosque and Muslims are not a race as they are not easilt identifiable. That said probably were they perpetarators not white and BME given names and huge generalisation on my part? EDIT: Having read link [ I had read it earlier before topic appeared on here and it named them but there were no pictures]The pictures would suggest otherwise 😳 but I think black people can be racist to Muslims.

Read it carefully

The prosecution accepted their guilty pleas of manslaughter / assault. Its not the consequences of their action but what those actions are that counts - this is a basic concept in UK law.

The legal system is indeed very fallible.

But how would you run this 'higher authority'?

I know this TJ but sometimes this needs to be taken into account as I said.

Both sides can appeal sentences that are either too low or too high already

Junkyard - why? surely its better to have some objective standards? Otherwise you get mob rule not the rule of law.

If you punish people for the consequences of their actions people would get life for minor incidents that result in death.

molgrips

[b]
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
[/b]

Similiar to appeals court ie very experienced high ranking judges or possibly a phone vote on a TV show hosted by davina ...not sure which is the better choice
TJ can they then get a sentence outside the guidlines? - I dont know the answer BTW can they?

TJ - objective standards are great and I am not proposing mob rule here am I? Sometimes things happen that fall outside the guidlines or the spirit of the law [ I know it does not exist] and when this occurs it is reasonable that independent judges using objective standards can use discretionary powers to sentence accordingly becasue the crime is exceptional*. This is what the judge seems to be suggesting and this is some way from mob rule.

* I could arge that independent judges uninfluenced by elected politicians is actually further from mob rule than the current scenario where politicians set the tarif guidlines

Its not the consequences of their action but what those actions are that counts - this is a basic concept in UK law.

Erm...no! If that was the case they would have been done for assault, but as the victim died, it was murder/manslaughter.

as stated we already have the appeal court process that acts as a check on daily court proceedings.

We do however need an agent of the state where the 'buck stops' so to speak. Otherwise we could just keep referring to a 'higher authority' until the desired outcome(of one person or group) is achieved. This would undermine the authority of the current judicial system.

I do agree though that some judicial decisions do seem 'wrong'. I keep in mind though that they are privy to the facts put before them in court, information that you or I would not know about from seeing or hearing a report in the media.

I’ll give you an example

A few years back a black friend of mine got done for GBH. The story being that he was walking home after a night out and two white lads started baiting him and his two mates who were also black. It was an uncontested fact that my mate walked away on a number of occasions but the baiting continued. Eventually they boiled over, and my mate grabbed one of the guys and smacked him. Fortunately the fella tried to twist out of the way as the blow contacted with and broke the guys collar bone instead of his face. (He is a very placid, but enormously powerful fella)

They were advised to plead guilty by their brief, which they did.

On the day of the case these two muppets were up for a string of similar occurrences on the same night, all of which had resulted in them assaulting the people they were baiting, some of them very seriously. (Those two ended the day with custodial sentences for their other perfromances from that night, and were actually caught due to the incident with my mate.)

In my mates case he was given the minimum sentence available to the judge, that then left him with a criminal record for a violent assault. The judge criticised the brief and told him that he was a disgrace to his profession, and should have been aware of these other offences. He then apologised to my mate and his mates saying "however, as you have pled guilty I have no option but to ………"

Now surely, common sense has to play a part somewhere FFS??

Berm Bandit - Common sense is indeed a great tool but for some reason it usually fails to fall within the "Guidelines".

BB - justice is blind. That's why the statue on the old bailey has a blindfold.

Meaning, you judge each case technically, as it's constructed and presented. No room for common sense, since it's widely known that common sense can cause terrible f*ck ups.

That's why the statue on the old bailey has a blindfold.

She doesn't actually. A fact well known to readers of Rumpole.

[img] [/img]

🙂

BB - I'm surprised that "baiting" is a defence to an assault - certainly not my understnading of Scots Criminal Law.

Oh.. well that image somewhere DOES have a blindfold, I swear.

I'm surprised that "baiting" is a defence to an assault

No, no Al, you're missing the point. The people doing the baiting were bad people. BB's mate stoving this chap's collar-bone in was simply a down-payment on the sentence of Public Stoning Until Substiantially Crippled that should have been imposed on the chap by the Court of Common Sense (Life President: Mr J Clarkson). 🙂

Regarding baiting, would it help if I added that it was racial and extremely provocative? Also there were a number of particularly nasty assaults carried out previously by the baitors on that same night.

The reality of that situation and the fact that the options available were extremely limited was not wasted on the judge albeit I may not have done the full content of what he said justice above.

Oh.. well that image somewhere DOES have a blindfold, I swear.

Metallica 1988, And Justice for all,
"Justice is lost
Justice is raped
Justice is gone
Pulling your strings
Justice is done
Seeking no truth
Winning is all
Find it so grim
so true
so real"

End of thread?

Meanwhile..........a UN backed tribunal sentences Duch to mere 19 years (plus 11 in custody) for the murder of 14,000 people.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-cambodia-khmer-rouge-20100727,0,4747344.story