Electric bike rider run down by fashion designer
- Thread starter 4bound
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And that is exactly what did happen. The cyclist wasn't charged with his criminal damage that provoked what she did, whilst she was fined £600 and had six penalty points applied.
The prosecution and court applied your reasonable view that she should have the harsher outcome, and I see nothing wrong with that result. Fair to both and well on the side of leniency to both.
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Good point re lesser charges overall and the greater sentence for the driver.
Re 'provoked', I personally have a problem with the idea anyone who merely does something which someone else feels angry about, provokes criminal behaviour which follows. The anger seems provoked but the person still has a choice of how to respond. They are free, and morally responsible for their actions, which break the chain of causation. It is just mixing things up to say 'but the annoying person deserves a smack'. (which I accept may not be what you're saying). They may do, but that's for the law, not for vigilantes. Vigilantism is a choice, not something persons in non-extreme situations are forced into. Surely only if a person has no choice or no faculties to choose, can one say that an action by someone else was the cause of their act. Vengefulness isn't a mitigating but surely properly an aggravating factor, in a political society where feuding must be suppressed. Whereas calling an act 'provoked' seems to try to mitigate its wrongfulness.
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I fully agree that provocation shouldn't result in retribution Jonathan, but where a driver is involved a different factor comes into play.
We all know of the existence of "road rage" and many of us have witnessed it's reality. The phenomenon has the effect that otherwise civilised persons can when driving behave in an out of control completely unreasonable way. That outcome being wrong is irrelevant in the presence of the fact, given what out of control means.
It follows from that knowledge that retaliating aganst a driver could provoke an out of control response, therefore making retaliation unwise.
Remember that in this case the cyclist had evidently also been provoked enough to cause the criminal damage to her car, so the desirability of breaking the chain of causation applied equally to him.
That then takes us back to my contention, that given all the circumstances, both were treated in an entirely fair and lenient manner with an equitable outcome.
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We all know of the existence of "road rage" and many of us have witnessed it's reality. The phenomenon has the effect that otherwise civilised persons can when driving behave in an out of control completely unreasonable way. That outcome being wrong is irrelevant in the presence of the fact, given what out of control means.
It follows from that knowledge that retaliating aganst a driver could provoke an out of control response, therefore making retaliation unwise.
Remember that in this case the cyclist had evidently also been provoked enough to cause the criminal damage to her car, so the desirability of breaking the chain of causation applied equally to him.
That then takes us back to my contention, that given all the circumstances, both were treated in an entirely fair and lenient manner with an equitable outcome.
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I agree that there was a good outcome. But I don't agree with some of that explanation for it. I think it's difficult for me to understand how being in charge of a one-ton weapon can of itself make someone less morally responsible for their actions because they might be subject to a phenomenon called road rage. I think being in charge of a car should make them subject to even more stringent moral duties than the norm. This second idea that drivers are especially weak, I think should be rejected. The criminal law surely properly allows a partial defence on moral grounds (or other partial moral exculpation, e.g. at the sentencing or charging phase) only for the most extreme cases i.e. insanity, automatism, loss of control from appalling physical abuse over a long period of time, but not for the everyday matter of driving a car around strangers.
I am not going to unpick this too carefully but I got the rough sense that maybe you felt that the purpose of sentencing and charging in this instance was to make reparation to each of the victims - so that having two victims (each being the victim of the other) meant that a lesser charge/sentence was required to do justice. I have to disagree. I'm in the camp that thinks the criminal law is properly concerned with wrongs or potential harms against society. It claims a monopoly on retaliation partly so people don't feel driven to that themselves, but that doesn't mean it's doing it for their benefit, but instead society's (imho). That said, by my own argument, you may have a point - if the means by which feuds start is a blow to someone's honour, then if each of the parties have hurt the other's honour, then maybe the criminal law has less danger of a feud to prevent. But there is still their harmful action to make an example of generally, as well as its intrinsic wrongful content to punish.
I think you're right there is something oddly fair about reducing charges for both participants in this particular instance - bu mainly because in this case it preserves their careers, not because they already made each other suffer a lot. But I reckon you're right that honour harmed equally, could be a reason why it would be permissible to press lesser charges (albeit ultimately for the career reason, it's not a good enough freestanding reason on its own imo).
I am not going to unpick this too carefully but I got the rough sense that maybe you felt that the purpose of sentencing and charging in this instance was to make reparation to each of the victims - so that having two victims (each being the victim of the other) meant that a lesser charge/sentence was required to do justice. I have to disagree. I'm in the camp that thinks the criminal law is properly concerned with wrongs or potential harms against society. It claims a monopoly on retaliation partly so people don't feel driven to that themselves, but that doesn't mean it's doing it for their benefit, but instead society's (imho). That said, by my own argument, you may have a point - if the means by which feuds start is a blow to someone's honour, then if each of the parties have hurt the other's honour, then maybe the criminal law has less danger of a feud to prevent. But there is still their harmful action to make an example of generally, as well as its intrinsic wrongful content to punish.
I think you're right there is something oddly fair about reducing charges for both participants in this particular instance - bu mainly because in this case it preserves their careers, not because they already made each other suffer a lot. But I reckon you're right that honour harmed equally, could be a reason why it would be permissible to press lesser charges (albeit ultimately for the career reason, it's not a good enough freestanding reason on its own imo).
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No, reparation wasn't my opinion on the purpose Jonathan, not in any way. The second paragraph in what I've quoted from your post is nearer the mark, basically I'm in favour of downscaling all sentencing anyway, and in this case the downscaling, aka leniency, was equitable.
As for road rage, of course I'm aware of the moral grounds limitations on what can be considered, but believe a court should be realistic. A loss of control means just that, so rational judgement temporarily goes out of the window just as surely as it does for an insane person. The law might not allow loss of control as an excuse in these circumstances, but I see nothing wrong in a court making some allowance by a degree of leniency in sentencing.
That surely is just simple humanity in the interests of best justice.
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Indeed the written law often isn't, but the interpretation and judgement of a court is entirely about justice and fairness, as it was in this case.
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I bet, but it does happen far more often than many seem to think, as it did in this case.
In my experience the majority of the public are very poor judges of what is fair and just, most leaning heavily towards the punitive (for the things they don't do or approve of.
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Quite the opposite in my case. I’m thinking more of 95% conviction rates in magistrates courts, and people sent to prison for two years for taking a bottle of water after a riot left the shop open and unattended.
Crown Courts get things wrong a lot more often than they like to admit too.
Crown Courts get things wrong a lot more often than they like to admit too.
I certainly agree on the first two premises John, but it was clear that the post riot sentencing was politically driven. Absolutely that should not have happened and the courts were often a disgrace in those instances. It's what happens when politicians insist on meddling in judicial matters as they have increasingly done in recent decades.
Crown Courts do indeed sometimes get things wrong, juries and judges are fallible, but on the whole they perform quite well. On the occasions when they don't the appeal processes lead to higher standards of justice.
In addition Crown Court judges will sometimes offer favourable terms to defendents in exchange for changing their not guilty plea so that the case can be settled on the pre-trial day without a jury. This is often advantageous for defendants, especially when the judge offers a Goodyear statement for that process as they often do.
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Well, the Police have to be pretty sure before they charge someone, then the Crown Prosecution Service has to nit pick the case with a fine toothcomb and only prosecute cases that have a fair chance of conviction. So it's no surprise that conviction rates in Magistrates courts are high.
As for the bottle of water. This was not shop lifting and the value is of little concern.
It was a wholesale riot and the rioters deserved heavy punishment.
As for the bottle of water. This was not shop lifting and the value is of little concern.
It was a wholesale riot and the rioters deserved heavy punishment.
Many of the people who were sent to prison like this man were not rioters at all but just in the wrong place at the wrong time. As I said he took a bottle of water from an open and riot hit shop. He did not break into it and the riot was over by then anyway.
Conviction rates are so high in magistrates courts because magistrates are notorious for believing everything the police say. Until fairly recently the police prosecuted cases in the lower courts, and in practice they often effectively still do with the CPS acting as little more than a rubber stamp. The CPS has much more of a role in cases which go before a jury and do look at them a lot more closely. But conviction rates are much lower in crown courts for all that. So that can’t be an issue in the high conviction rates in the lower courts.
Conviction rates are so high in magistrates courts because magistrates are notorious for believing everything the police say. Until fairly recently the police prosecuted cases in the lower courts, and in practice they often effectively still do with the CPS acting as little more than a rubber stamp. The CPS has much more of a role in cases which go before a jury and do look at them a lot more closely. But conviction rates are much lower in crown courts for all that. So that can’t be an issue in the high conviction rates in the lower courts.
So very true in the magistrate court cases, but unfortunately there have been many instances where even crown court cases have been forwarded for trial by CPS's without proper examination. This appears to result from periods of case overload.
In one case I know of the CPS were unwittingly presenting to the crown court what turned out to be a second good defence case! Even the two prosecution witnesses were supporting the defence account in their MG11 statements, something that obviously should have been spotted.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the general information section of the case papers contained within three pages sections that made a reconstructable record of the police case officer's wilful misleading of her senior officers. This she had done in order to continue with an unjustified prosecution.
It never reached a jury.
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Its all relative.
In 1961 I went with my friend to visit his aunt who lived in Ferryside.
She told us that as a girl before the first World War, she saw two rioters shot dead by the army at a strike that blocked the railway line at Ferryside. So, things are improving!
In 1961 I went with my friend to visit his aunt who lived in Ferryside.
She told us that as a girl before the first World War, she saw two rioters shot dead by the army at a strike that blocked the railway line at Ferryside. So, things are improving!
I agree John, this man wasn't a rioter. He was in fact a looter, a man ransacking some unfortunate person's business which had been attacked by the rioting scum.
They should have been shot on site and their bodies loaded into a skip by a man driving a JCB.
Sorry for slightly shifting away from this topic, but on any occasion has anyone on here being spat on or water thrown on you from a passing vehicle for no reason but maybe by the likes of that scum having fun doing it for a laugh, which you normally clock on to what really just happened after a few seconds.
This has happened to me a few times over a couple of years and I was just wondering if this was a common thing to happen to cyclists here in busy London
MS.
This has happened to me a few times over a couple of years and I was just wondering if this was a common thing to happen to cyclists here in busy London
MS.
it's happened to me, several times - usuallya few teengers in a car that spots me (before especially on a recumbent), then returns and throws water (eggs and other objects on other occasions). it utterly defies any reasonable explanation i can come up with, other than that it hasnt happened to me anywhere other than dear old blighty, and i travel a lotSorry for slightly shifting away from this topic, but on any occasion has anyone on here being spat on or water thrown on you from a passing vehicle for no reason but maybe by the likes of that scum having fun doing it for a laugh, which you normally clock on to what really just happened after a few seconds.
This has happened to me a few times over a couple of years and I was just wondering if this was a common thing to happen to cyclists here in busy London
MS.