Just What Do Scum Have To Do To Get Locked Up?

[youngmafbog]

Yet more right-on liberal sentencing.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3967586/I-cried-eyes-Mother-s-fury-thug-started-fight-left-son-catastrophically-injured-just-one-punch-walks-free-court-second-time-year.html

[cassa333]

Sometimes there is nothing they can do that will get a custodial sentence being activated.

TBH I didn't read why he wasn't banged up but it seems indicative of a lot of sentencing we are seeing. Even the original sentence seems like nothing at all.

[ToraToraTora]

search me YMB, one of the Right on brigade will be along soon to make excuses for this pond life. Makes me feel a uncle to be honest.

[hereIam]

Utter bloody madness !!!

[Mamyalynne]

The story linked to seems to concentrate on Widdowson, who did start the fight walk away and should have been treated more harshly I agree.

However the man who delivered the crippling blow/s was sentenced, albeit not for long enough.

//Cooper, from Blyth, admitted grievous bodily harm at Newcastle Crown Court.
The attacker, who has a previous conviction for another violent city centre assault, was jailed for two-and-a-half years.//

[Lunol]

Taken from the DM comments,

"So what do you have to do to get put in prison these days? Murder an MP? As apparently that's the only time the law seems to give a punishment that fits the crime"

[fiction-factory]

The headline might lead some to think that it was Widdowson who had inflicted the dreadful injuries, but as Mamyalynne has pointed out it was actually Cooper who inflicted them and he was sentenced for 2½ years (not enough perhaps but that's what it was) for GBH. Widdowson was involved in starting the fight but for whatever reason (perhaps he didn't inflict the blows) he was charged with only common assault. The judge must have followed the sentencing guidelines for such offences so I am not sure there is anything to support the suggestion the judge was a 'right on liberal'. Presumably the subsequent obstruction charge was not considered serious enough to justify activating the 8 week sentence. Personally I would have preferred that the individual be taken off the streets for 8 weeks (or longer if the guidelines allowed it) to keep the streets safer although we know that often a jail sentence usually means the offender becomes hardened by prison and would probably be a violent menace for ever more.

[douglas9401]

Good grief! I suppose we should be grateful that the standard 'we didn't hear all the evidence presented in court' hasn't been trotted out in mitigation.

[Mamyalynne]

No need, simple enough to comment on the facts we do know, Cooper didn't get long enough for his major role and Widdowson certainly didn't get just punishment for starting the whole thing.

[fiction-factory]

Yes, it would be interesting to know what the range of sentences was that the judge could use for these offences

[mikey4444]

Seems a very light sentence to me, for such a serious offence, although I am at a loss to understand your "right-on" business.

[andy-hughes]

I can only sumise that the sentences are based on intent, rather than result.

If you punch someone, that is assault, but in law, you could not predict the catastrophic level of injury that resulted in this case, and therefore cannot be punished for it.