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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

To think we need to take death by driving much more seriously

84 replies

DynamoKev · 05/01/2021 20:37

3 years 9 months for the senseless killing of this woman cyclist is inadequate.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/josephine-gilbert-herbert-wyatt-cyclist-4812635.amp

OP posts:
Puzzledandpissedoff · 07/01/2021 11:52

Long sentences have been shown to have no effect on crime rates or recidivism

No, but remembering that many are already repeat offenders by the time they hit a cell, they work pretty well in preventing them from doing whatever-it-is again while inside

FWIW, except for the very worst cases, I prefer lengthy driving bans to imprisonment - but I also recognise that there's a difference between banning someone and actually preventing them from driving

ProfessorSlocombe · 07/01/2021 12:07

FWIW, except for the very worst cases, I prefer lengthy driving bans to imprisonment

It would help a lot if bans were actually enforced. Personally, I'd happily have a raft of laws to enable anyone caught driving while banned to lose the car - no matter who it belonged to originally (if you are stupid enough to let a banned driver use your car, you deserve to lose it).

safariboot · 07/01/2021 17:59

On the topic of disqualified drivers driving. I think there should be an offence of providing a car to a disqualified driver. At the moment car sellers don't need to do any checks. If the seller faces criminal penalties for selling a car to someone banned, they'll think twice about it and banned drivers will find it that much harder to get new wheels.

(Disqualified driver to be distinguished from a driver who has never held a full license. There are lots of reasons someone might want to own a car they won't drive. The law would need to be drafted to avoid impacting such people.)

InTheSnow · 07/01/2021 20:43

@ProfessorSlocombe

Juries are often not the best way to try cases.

But they are probably the best way to ensure a justice system

It's your choice. You can have ever single case rigidly overseen by experts, and tyranny creep in as always does.

Or you can risk the rare odd perverse result knowing that it's buying you - and your fellow citizen and families - some sort of protection from the most capricious of tyrants.

I know which I would want for me and mine.

Having sat on two juries and being an Expert Witness on more so, I think the system has changed a lot over the last two decades.

High Court judges upwards are more clued up. They are wise and get the jib. When it comes to sentencing they are often let down by loonies in the the two Houses who make the law. Just read the UK Court Sentencing Reports and you can just get how the judges are frustrated with their sentencing powers.

So the two juries I have sat on:

JURY 1 - I was 'foreman'. About half the jurors did not engage and left it to me to make the decision and wanted to get out ASAP.

JURY 2 - Clearly a prejudice on race and gender.

Never have I seen it so sharply defined that the jury system is so lacking. I would prefer a well prepared case in-front of a panel of judges any day.

[Not that it is relevant, but just look at the US today and how the 'Leave the EU' campaign was conducted].

ProfessorSlocombe · 08/01/2021 13:18

Never have I seen it so sharply defined that the jury system is so lacking. I would prefer a well prepared case in-front of a panel of judges any day.

As I said, it's about an overall system not a series of individual judgements all lumped together.

A juror is master of their own conscience - or can be. A judge isn't. They just do "what the law says". Good law. Bad law. They don't give two shits. If the law says that you jail someone for being poor - that's what they do.

We know this because (a) it's what they did, and (b) people don't change.

So stuff "learned judges" where the sun don't shine, and allow a sliver of conscience into justice. And you can only do that with a juror.

The late Lord Devlin, arguably the greatest judge of the century, was a powerful defender of trial by jury.

He said: "Each jury is a little parliament. The jury sense is the parliamentary sense. I cannot see the one dying and the other surviving. The first object of any tyrant in Whitehall would be to make parliament utterly subservient to his will; and the next to overthrow or diminish trial by jury, for no tyrant could afford to leave a subject's freedom in the hands of 12 of his countrymen. So that trial by jury is more than an instrument of justice and more than one wheel of the constitution; it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives."

VestaTilley · 08/01/2021 13:30

Yes, absolutely.

I’ve never understood why the sentences received are so low.

sqirrelfriends · 08/01/2021 13:38

The sentences are laughable.

A girl I was at school with (17) died in a car crash. Her boyfriend (19) who was drunk and disqualified for dangerous driving careened off the road while he was showing off. He got five years and served less than 2.

firstimemamma · 08/01/2021 13:43

Yanbu. I've seen driving and texting a few times and one time I saw it an old man had literally just made it to the other side of the road. If events had been different by 5 seconds I'm certain he'd have been killed. It's awful.

DynamoKev · 27/01/2021 13:46

Of course it does nothing for the suffering of the family, but actually their hurt and loss will be the same whether he does 3 years or 30. The difference is just vengeance.
I think you are using Vengeance pejoratively. Not having been in the position of having lost a person in these circumstances I can't know if the level of suffering is related to the sentence given to the perpetrator. I find the sentence in this case an insult. As a society we have sentences that reflect our view on the severity of the offence. The life sentence for murder reflects our view of the severity of the crime. This level of sentencing reflects a view that the very easily avoidable death of a person - which was easily foreseeable and considerably aggravated by the behaviour of the offender was a relatively trivial thing, and that cannot be right in my view.

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