Auriol Grey conviction overturned

[Icantpossibly]

The original decision split opinion and I have no doubt today’s one will do the same.
I saw the report in The Independent online.
Aplogies if this duplicates another post. I looked and couldn’t see one

What a slap in the face for the family of the victim.

Would the victim have swerved and fallen off her bike into the path of a car and died a horrible death if Auriol Gray hadn't aggressively sworn, gestured and made contact with her? Obviously not.

Auriol Gray is a callous individual. The only consolation is I don't think she'll have an easy time of it outside prison. This is a widely publicised case and people now know all the detail of her vile behaviour.

How long has she been in prison?

It is not okay to shout, swear and gesture at cyclists, or step in their path, and put them in danger. I hope the laws lax approach to this doesn’t embolden other people to behave this way towards cyclists.

I feel very sorry for the victims family.

I agree.

There is another thread. There was no base offence committed to justify a manslaughter charge and this wasn't even covered in the original trial. Auriol Gray is partially sighted, has cerebral palsy and is vulnerable. It's very sad that the woman cyclist fell off into the road, but to accuse a pedestrian of manslaughter, even an angry one who didn't touch the cyclist, was ridiculous. If the accused hadn't been vulnerable I doubt this would have made it to court.

You are pleased that a vulnerable disabled woman is likely to be harassed or abused and you think she’s the callous one? Ok….

It seems her release is down to an issue of law (no base offence) so I defer to the judges and their specialist knowledge on that.

However, what safeguards will be in place to ensure this doesn’t happen again, or something similar? Is she cognitively able to understand the consequences of her behaviour (which was belligerent and did contribute to the death of someone, even if it doesn’t reach the threshold for manslaughter)? If not, she needs to be supervised in public. Hopefully that will happen anyway because she will likely encounter some hostility.

I feel deeply sorry for the family of the cyclist. Hopefully they are able to reconcile themselves to the decision for her release, but I wouldn’t blame them if they can’t.

Someone died because of this fool

Deserves all she got. Prison won't have been kind to her...

@Nospecialcharactersplease

The blackbelt barrister did a summary.

It seems that shouting and gesturing at someone would not have been prosecuted as assault, so without the assault you cannot have manslaughter.

I do think having a pavement that can also be used by cyclists is crazy though. There should at least be markings telling both where they can walk / cycle.

I think the right decision has been made in this tragic case. It shouldn't have been prosecuted in the way that it was. Whether Grey is callous or not is irrelevant - she did not attempt to kill anyone and could not have got out of the way in time or predicted the death that occurred. Someone was always going to get hurt due to the council's decision to have cyclists on the pavement there. I hope the council is dealt with.

She had already been released.

That seems to set a dangerous president. Does that then mean that shouting and gesturing then cannot be seen as abuse in a abusive situation in a home environment regardless of what was actually said?

I don't think so.

I think a one off telling a stranger to FO is totally different to a abusive situation.

The court, either the prosecution or the judge should have asked the jury to decide on whether there had been an assault.

She may not have had the specific intention of killing anyone, but any reasonable person could foresee that her actions might well lead to the death of the cyclist.

If she is too disabled to make that logical thought process, then she shouldn't be out on her own. But I don't think this is the case.

I suspect she will be tried again on slightly different legal grounds - this is more about a point of law than about the facts of the case.

There is already a thread on this. Auriol has brain damage from being born with her umbilical cord around her neck, starving her brain of oxygen. She then proceeded to have multiple childhood surgeries on her brain to stop the resulting seizures. Two experts testified that the surgeries likely caused even more damage to her brain/cognitive abilities. She was in assisted living when this happened because she can't live on her own.

So no, she was likely not able to foresee or understand the situation the way most of us would.

The appeal judge has refused permission for a retrial.

Whilst this helps us understand Auriol’s actions on a human level I don’t think it actually had any bearing on the decision to release her. Where I hope it will be taken into account is in managing her future behaviour in public. In my view she should always be accompanied in public from now on, primarily for safety’s sake but also because the victim’s family may also take some comfort from the fact that lessons have been learned from the death of their loved one.

The conviction was overturned. There will be no conditions on her release requiring supervision.

She apparently had more assistance at one point, but it was downgraded by the local council. If you want more support for disabled people make sure you use your vote accordingly.

I understand it is not a condition of her release, I doubt there is a mechanism for that.

Somebody will have responsibility for her though if she’s that cognitively impaired, whether that is the council, her assisted living facility, a social worker or an appointed relative. It should be part of her risk assessment and package of support and so on. The fact is if she can’t learn from her previous behaviour she may well repeat it, and so it is too dangerous for her to be alone.

And for the record it would be a cold day in hell before I vote Tory.

Yeah, the irony of that comment after the endless PIP bashing threads. This is what society has voted for; the disabled to receive as little money and support as possible.

On this case, I was really on the fence. But having read further, tend to agree this was the correct decision.

You are pleased that a vulnerable disabled woman is likely to be harassed or abused and you think she’s the callous one? Ok….

Absolutely, she's likely to get harassed and she's brought it on herself with her disgusting behaviour.

Does anyone honestly think the victim would have swerved into the path of a car if Auriol Gray hadn't behaved aggressively towards her?

There are hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities who wouldn't dream of doing what she did; I'm not going down the path of believing a disability is a free pass to behave in such a nasty, vindictive way.

Grey DID make contact with the cyclist.

Police interview.

Grey is callous, aggressive and uncaring- an horrendous person.

Lied throughout the police interview.

I agree- This woman Grey is a risk to others.

For anyone having a go at Auroil, apparently she herself was shouted at, called a F*cking spastic and other abusive terms so the people who called her that haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory either.

She isn’t a risk to others. Yes, she has black and white thinking, can be prone to outbursts in public but I believe her behaviour could be controlled.

I don’t think she really understands some of what she’s done as per her police interview and seems to think she’s right (whether or not she’s correct is another matter) but Grey is vulnerable I’d say rather than a risk to others.