Angry about lenient sentence for murder of elderly man in park

They should have got life sentences or close to it. Maybe 50 years.

Apologies my MS riddled fingers accidentally clicked on YABU. Which was obviously a mistake

It doesn't take much to whip the Reform lot into a frenzy or the Daily mail for that matter.

I wonder what the response would have been if a couple of Asian kids had killed a white elderly man? No doubt the Daily Mail et al would have been whipping the Reform lot into a frenzy…

I think a lack of empathy is part of the issue here. How do we get them to learn empathy for victims of violence or human beings in general? I suspect if kids aren't taught to put themselves in other peoples shoes as children it's to late for them to learn it as teenagers.

I'm sure we are seeing this more often because of hate for minorities being incited on social media. racism seems to be increasing.

what on earth was their motive if it was not racially motivated? they just wanted to beat someone to pulp for the fun of it? I wish there was a screening for this kind of personality type at a young age, then they could be sent somewhere to re-programme their brains.

Nobody knows for sure if he is truly “fixed” or means his apology he made but as long as he/mary bell have not been recalled to prison (and they do get monitored carefully for obvious reasons) and have now allegedly both moved on with partners/ children then i think we can all agree the young people / children's / teenage justice then I think it can be presumed the system does work to an extent. So hopefully justice can help these two people.

I don’t think we (the general public) know

All we know is that he has not been recalled to prison - yet.

If you think that proves he has been rehabilitated then that answers your question.

True, they might not have killed a younger person, but they may have left them with a permanent brain injury, lifelong disability from injury, PTSD or other lifelong mental health issues. I don’t really agree it would be better to attack a younger person over an older one just because the likelihood of death is lower, again arguably it could be better to end the life of an 80 year old vs leaving a 30 year old with a lifelong of disability, care needs and trauma. After my parent suffered a catastrophic brain injury I admit it was a relief when they passed, had they lived it would have been with 24/7 care needs and significant disability. I don’t believe death is always the worst outcome in a situation like this, although obviously the ideal would be that the assault had never happened. I’m obviously not saying I think that anything about this was okay, just that again I don’t think just because the person was elderly it is worse than if he had been young and I don’t think that death is necessarilly always the worst outcome.

Fair enough 👌

Now we’re getting philosophical. Your utilitarian approach is interesting.

But it’s not an approach the criminal law and sentencing principles follow.

Going for an easy target less able to defend themselves is and to my mind will always be a strong aggravating factor.

What makes you think that it wasn’t?

Judges have to balance both aggravating and mitigating factors. I haven’t read the sentencing remarks, but there’s no way the victim’s age wouldn’t have been taken into account as an aggravating factor here.

Have you read or heard something to show that it wasn’t?

You may think the final sentence arrived at is low, but that’s another matter.

I agree - I cannot believe how many people, including youngsters, think absolutely nothing of going out determined/willing to kill anybody for any trivial reason.

There's always been random violence from a certain kind of person who metes it out for somebody just looking at them; but - bad as it is - that involves bruises and pain that can usually last a day or two and then go away. What makes somebody actually quite happy to KILL somebody for a silly arbitrary reason? Mr Kohli appears to have been targeted for being Asian, being old and for berating them with common sense that their parents should have done long ago... and for that, they believed he should actually DIE.

I don't know their parents, but it may not 'just' have been negligence. There are a lot of terrible, criminally and anti-socially-minded parents out there who actively coach their kids to do this kind of stuff. Some of them who have lots of kids will teach the eldest to commit crime and then get them and the next kids to pass it down in a chain to their younger siblings - often conveniently exploiting the window of time between when the child physically and mentally can learn to do it and when they reach the age of criminal responsibility.

Thanks…I feel like you have to have it sometimes in these sorts of situations when it’s children. Mary bell, Robert Thompson have managed to keep their noses clean. While it might go the other way for these two there’s no reason they can’t use this chance in custody to clean their lives up. There has to be hope.

The kids' behaviour/mannerisms etc will 99% be reflective of their upbringing/parents close family friends etc so it doesn't say much for the rest of the clan. If so they didn't have much of a chance really - sad really.

Yeah, I feel like there is something in this.
children will reflect their environments and upbringing I.e. parenting, siblings, wider family network, friendship groups, school, social media. Dread to think what their parents and families are like.

I think there is an egg shell skull rule so you take the victim as you find them. Possibly a younger more resilient person would of survived for example and it’d be gbh or something.

But the fact that the judge declared that the attack wasn’t racially motivated is causing serious concern. Many, many people think that it was because of the language used by the defendants. If it the judge had decided that there was a racial element to the attack, the sentences would most likely have been longer.

The judge isn't saying that the language used wasn't racist. The fact that the boy used a sadly common racial slur during the attack unfortunately isn't proof alone that the attack was racially motivated.

We know the motivation behind the attack - the victim was targeted as he was involved in previous altercations with the attackers. To say that the motive for the attack was racial would be to say that it would not have happened if the victim was of a different race, which is almost certainly untrue.

We have a high bar for depravation of liberty in this country and in this particular case it seems that there simply wasn't enough evidence to reach the threshold for proof of race being an aggravating factor.

For what it's worth, I believe it was mentioned in court that neither child was found to hold generally racist views.

If they think thats a way to behave then at that age I think they're past learning how to behave. Don't they say if you haven't got well behaved kids by the time they're 7 then it's too late? And I'm talking and please and thank yous and using coasters on an oak table lol without being prompted - and of course knowing you don't go around beating people up and killing them.

Whilst I agree with the potential (non-)parenting issues here - I struggle to believe that anyone can think its OK to attack a vulnerable person, kill them as if its a normal day like going to the shops - maybe I'm naive about how some people live. If so then I'm glad to be like that and that we live in the sticks where its all a bit more peaceful. If that happened here the police wouldn't know what to do first - probably check the closest cars for bald tyres

Pathetic. Parents should be sentenced too!

Exactly. And also, I can’t seem to get the image out of my head of what I read, that he was slapped with a shoe on his knees. It’s abhorrent, and then to find him in the park wailing and crying out in pain. Just couldn’t imagine that happening to my family member, I wouldn’t know how to cope or get over that.

They may be “children” but they’re not young children, and they are old enough to know better. I can’t imagine you can truly rehabilitate someone like this can you?

I agree - thats madness - if anything its worse as he may not have been able to defend himself as well as a youngster.

Indeed. Even aside from the punishment aspect, it's starkly manifest that these children have never had the requisite basic parenting that most of us had - not that any of our parents were/are perfect - and are thus woefully lacking in the rudimentary essentials of whay they need ro function in society; so this clearly needs to be strictly addressed at a state level before they can be allowed to roam free for a considerable amount of time.

Just because we consider people to be capable of functioning as adults at the age of 18, that does very much depend on the expectation that proper parenting and learning will have taken place up to that age.

just like if you buy a plot of land and get a load of bricks and other building materials dropped off from a lorry, you can't go away with nobody there for several years and just expect to come back to a fully-completed home that's all ready to move into.

I agree - if there was a situation where it was me or one of my boys I'd take it without question - they should have 70 years left whereas I've done nearly 50.
However this gent's age isn't important - he was 80yo, out walking the dog and his family expected him home. If he'd been a burglar and been attacked - like the traveller who got stabbed with a screwdriver and died, or a drug dealer and something went wrong between gangs well thats the risk you take, but honest citizens minding their own business is very different.

I can’t believe some posters are justifying the weak sentences given to the offenders because the victim was old and therefore didn’t have long to live anyway.