To feel sorry for (and think the punishment is too long) for the 18 year old who threw the fire extinguisher in the protests

[LaurieFairyonthetreeEatsCake]

2 years, 8 months in jail

here

That's a looooong time. Is the reasoning supposed to be that it's a deterrent?

There are people with asbo's who cause no end of trouble and don't get sentences like this.

x posts PineCones.
Exactly, you can't give someone 18 months for killing their wife, despite all he apologists like kungfupanda who come on defending him on the basis that it was a single blow that killed her. Some fucking blow that must have been

i don't see the relevance, if you object to other people getting lighter sentences then protest about that, imo it has no bearing on this man getting a long enough sentence.

yes, i do think he should go to university

I absolutely think he should be punished- he is being punished- i don't think that the punishment is too harsh.

i whole heartedly believe though that he should be able to make ammends for it through serving his sentence and then build the life he should have. Not be punished for the rest of his life. He is a teenager and did something criminal, lets not turn him into a hardened criminal or someone with no future that is going to cost the taxpayer money for the next 60 years

my mistake, obviously anyone can go to university now even if you arn't clever.

that's what Pinecone said 2shoes. I'm not objecting to the actual sentence, I'm objecting to the unfairness of the justice system
It's a fucking joke, the way women's lives are not taken seriously when it comes to sentencing their murderers, and a case like this magnifies how arbitrary sentencing is

Nope don't feel sorry for him - he could've killed someone throwing it down towards a crowd of people like that and at the police too!

However, I think that some of the sentences doled out the past week or so for this and the expenses stuff highlight how rubbish our justice system is when people that commit worse crimes get less sentences.

I think the other sentences need increasing not these decreasing.

2shoes

lets face facts- anyone can go to university if they can get 3 a levels.

many students cant budget, and drink all their money in the first week, make rash decisions and occaisionally stagger into the traffic on a Saturday night. All of this is stupid.

my understanding is that he wanted to go to university and presumably had a reasonable chance of doing so=if not i cant see what he was doing on the protest.

kind of proves why university's are seen as a waste of space.....

Yes, there are absolute cunts out there who should be serving huge sentences for abusing and killing their wives. Unless you believe they are serving a correct sentence though you should be arguing for them serving MORE time not for lesser offenders serving LESS time.

That doesn't make any fucking sense at all.

Dh watches all these cop shows where the police pick up absusive drunken arse holes who attack the poilce and swear at them. At the end we always hear the offender was served with a caution. Big fucking deal.

We need to start actually making people serve their prison time and dole out appropriate sentences for the crimes they commit and we wouldn't have so many repeat offenders.

I tell you this little fucker won't be lobbing shit off buildings ever again at the end of this!

one last thing, there were protesters down there too if it had it one of your children instead of nearly taking out a police officer would you be more angry

[beats head against desk]

It took me all of 5 seconds to find a link to that news story. It is quite clear that the court was satisfied that it was not the type of blow that should have killed. The death was caused by a rupture triggered by the blow. There was presumably medical evidence to that effect. Unless, of course, you have information that was not available to the lawyer who toom the decision not to charge him with murder, or the sentencing judge?

I wish people would realise that the sentences that make the papers for apparently being too short are newsworthy for the very reason that they are unusual. They are either unusual because of their particular circumstances or because the judge got it wrong. If the judge gets it wrong the cps will generally appeal. If a judge is repeatedly appealed he will be pulled up and probably sent for re training.

It is not a case of just upping the sentences for other offences to make people happy about this one. I can't say any more times how the sentencing process works. Perhaps the people who are getting so upset about this issue would like to do some research into sentencing and then they will be in a position to lobby their MP about specific shortcomings in the system or perhaps get involved witha relevant organisation. They certainly won't be taken seriously by just moaning 'it's all too short innit?"

As for apologist, don't make me laugh. If you don't want the facts, then that is up to you. Explaining how the system works does not give an indication of my views on an individual case. It wasn't my case. I don't know any more than the readily available information. Unlike other people here who seem to have the inside track.

2 women murdered a week, the average sentence is 4 years. When you hear that (yet another) wife-killer has been given a tiny sentence, you don't rush to defend him: "it was only a single blow/ I don't believe it "

The shocker, the real shocker would be if a man got a good thirty years for killing his wife. Now that would be newsworthy

[beats head against desk]

2shoes do you really think that?

kungfupannda thanks for your posts on this thread - really interesting

I think it was an appropriate sentence. He maybe was drunk/acted out of character in the heat of the moment but he's lucky noone was killed. He says that he threw it into a gap in the crowd but it missed people by a couple of feet - by luck not judgement!

Am I right in thinking that if he's taking a-levels this year he'd have been going to uni in Sept 2011 and wouldn't have been affected by the fee increase. So the irnoic thing is now after 18months in a YOI he'll go to uni later and have to pay the higher fees. Talk about the punishment fitting the crime.

sakura

I don't really see your point? Is anyone on this thread campaning for women to be abused and their attackers to get lighter sentences?

Because you are really confusing me.

Kungfupannda is trying to explain legally why some people have shorter sentences. She hasn't commented on the morality of that at all, nor has she beenan apologiser as you say.

Maybe look for a bun fight elsewhere as you are making yourself look silly

Its interesting to read the accounts of the students who were sent to prison / Borstal forty years ago after the riot at the Garden House Hotel in Cambridge. They were sentenced to between 9 - 18 months, and it sounds like that was considered very severe at the time.

There was an interview with three of them in Cam magazine not long back, and all three saw it as a turning point in their life, and not in a bad way - one of them became a teacher in the inner city, another worked in the trades union movement (the magazine is here, article on p 28-29). I liked one's comment "I had two choices: I could either
say ?Yes, this was a terrible accident? or I could
come out with a reason as to why I was there.
So although I had no strong political views
when I went in, by the time I came out I was
a hardened lefty ? and remained so for the rest
of my life."

I hope that this student will also be able to make something meaningful out of his experiences - yes, what he did was very wrong, and fair play that he goes to prison, but he isn't the first and won't be the last 18 year old to get carried away in the madness of a mob situation.

There's a shorter string about this in 'politics' which is in the 'Other Stuff' section.
I think the sentence is absurd. The boy didn't kill or injure anyone. There is no way of proving he even intended to do anything other than add to the shock impact of the demonstration.
What he did was stupid, though, and dangerous - if I'd been the judge I'd have gone for sentencing him to one or two weeks in prison, followed by community service or probation.* The couple of weeks in prison would have been enough of a shock to send the message home that what he did was seriously wrong.

*I'm not legally trained, so I'm just guessing about whether that would be possible as a sentence. If not, - a fortnight in prison OR probation/community service.

He could of killed someone, he should have got longer.

He doesn't need to worry about how much his tuition fees are going to cost now does he - the idiot.

Hopefully no uni will except him when he gets out so he'll have to face the consequences of his actions for the rest of his life.

His parents must be so proud.

The same goes for the girl who threw the bin at the royal car. If this is the mentality of the future population then we're better off with them off the streets. They're just immature kids that need to realize that throwing a paddy when they don't get their own way wont get them very far in life.

I went to uni in the first year that they brought in tuition fees and I didn't go out throwing objects off roofs or smashing up buildings, I just excepted it and got on with it. I left uni 9 years ago and still haven't finished paying it off neither has my husband, but that's life I'm afraid.

I'm just irritated at how arbitrary sentencing appears to be.
I agree that the sentencing for this fire extinguisher case is about par for the crime, but it doesn't sit well with me that other crimes, more heinous crimes, receive the same or less.
smallwhitecat, it seems that very few get life if the average sentence is four years. That means lots are getting less than 4 years.

And saying 18 months is justified because "it was just a single blow" is not on. It must have been a pretty hefty blow

this thread wouldn't even be here if he wasn't a white lad from a good family from leafy suburbia.

good point cantspel

So if a close family member of yours had happened to be standing below Laurie and they had been killed, you would still be complaining that the sentence was too long? It is only through sheer luck that he didn't kill someone.

I give up. I really do. What is the point of engaging in a discussion if you aren't interested in the actual facts behind the Daily Mail headlines? There are all sorts of valid points to be made about sentencing practices but some people just aren't interested in engaging properly on the issue. Presumably because it is much more satisfying to shout inaccurately and project all sorts of motivation onto people who try to explain the reality of the situation.

Listening and understanding the facts (or actually educating yourself about them - it's not difficult) doesn't mean you have to agree with them - but it does mean that you have a solid base on which to base your arguments.

Sakura - I agree with the poster who says you are making yourself look silly. I am sure you have entirely valid points to make but you are doing them no justice by wrapping them up in emotive language such as "rush to defend" and reiterating innacuracies such as "must have been a hell of a blow". Why don't you do some research about that story if it troubles you so much?