To think today’s article about Auriol Grey paint a very different picture

[HibiscusBlues]

I was sad to see articles today about the woman jailed for the death of a cyclist. At the time of the offence she was living in a home for the disabled. If this is the case my experience is places like that aren’t easily available.
Shes partially blind, has balance problems and cognitive difficulties after a birth injury to the brain. She’s had related brain surgery.
If this is the case, as her family’s appeal stated, then there does seem a disconnect with the judge saying no difficulties that impacted her actions. Accessing supported living yet being deemed able-bodied and cognitively normal by a court.
Obviously the incident was horrendous for the Ward family, and the cyclist need not deserve to die. It’s a sad case. However the handling of the case is starting to sound uncomfortable. What have others thought of the articles today?

Whoever it is, they are sick.

Can you imagine the victim being your close relative and having to see these sickos campaigning for her killer to be freed?

Absolutely appalling.

The media definitely know how to pick em. Tony Martin as another odd example springs to mind. There are loads of cases of vulnerable people going through court but they're probably a bit too black and white for the news to bother publicising

But this isn’t a miscarriage of justice because in law, this is a very simple and straightforward case of manslaughter.

Your issue seems to be with the prison sentence. But the conviction is entirely correct.

The argument "bad things happen all the time, therefore we shouldn't try to change anything" doesn't work for me. Otherwise how would we ever change or improve anything ?

Neither does "we might upset victims so we shouldn't try to address a miscarriage of justice" if we think it occurs.

I accept though that this is a traumatic process for all the people personally involved and they have my greatest sympathy.

If it were a very simple and straightforward case, why did it go to a retrial ?

Can you explain that ?

No, I can’t.

I haven’t found or read anything about why it was retried, so it would be pretty inappropriate of me to speculate.

As are you - clueless. As are all of us. Hence me making a point that a JURY and a JUDGE heard all of the evidence put to them and decided Auriol was guilty of manslaughter. You didn't, I didn't, nobody else on this thread did. I don't believe Auriol looked at all afraid or intimidated in that footage. Had I been in the courtroom I may have heard evidence to the contrary and changed my mind. But I'm assuming the jury didn't given they found her GUILTY.

Fair enough. I am in the same position.

I thought I read somewhere that the original trial the jury failed to reach a verdict, but not 100% sure. Hopefully someone knows.

condensing the overall topic to one single case feels very harsh on the actual victim in this instance.

How is it harsh on Mrs Ward?

Fuck me there are some obscure twists and turns in this thread but I never thought some fucker would manage to make it about fucking Brexit.

I think you've not understood me there

Quite possibly. Could you explain?

Only the two people involved would be able to give a truly accurate account of the flow of their individual thoughts as they first saw each other.Possibly the cyclist saw the pedestrian first,but we don't know.should she have stopped?was she considering swerving which is why she lost control of her bike as the pedestrian swing her arm out?nobody will ever know.
For the sake of the families of each party and that of the distraught driver perhaps this will become less of a popular subject to discuss as they try to rebuild their lives .such a sad,fatal outcome of two strangers shocked actions that took a few seconds to occur.

Ward is the victim I was referring to. The one that died, not the one that's maybe going to prison for 18 months

To me it's definitely worth re-examining the whole case in some detail. Because surely the point of the exercise is to try to understand what happened, ensure justice is served, and stop the tragedy happening again.

How many times do you want it reexamined? It’s had two trials and a jury has now reached a unanimous verdict. How much scarce public money do you want to spend on it? How much more pain do you want to put the cyclist’s family and the driver through by rehashing it again and again?

Justice has been served. In the 50 years that road’s existed this is the one and only incident of its kind. The chances of it happening again are negligible, not least because this is a very clear example of what might happen if pedestrians start kicking off at cyclists on shared pathways.

I thought so. But I don't understand how focusing on the case is harsh towards her?

I do genuinely think I have misunderstood something here, so I'm not being facetious or sarcastic.

I tried to look up about the frequency of retrials and it doesn't seem easy to get statistics, which you'd think there would be. All I found is that retrials normally work in favour of the defence so it's interesting that this case is an exception to that.

Also interesting that the first trial seems to have generated no press at all, or I'm but very good at googling

"How many times do you want it reexamined?"

As many times as the defendant wants to or is allowed to under the current justice system.

Seriously? You’d carry on throwing public money at it ad infinitum? You’d put two families through hell for years with no closure because a convicted criminal refuses to accept justice?

Err yes.

Because it's a basic human right to be able to appeal your conviction, or at least to appeal the right to have it reviewed.

Because sometimes the courts get it wrong - just look at the history of people being convicted for crimes they didn't commit.

Because you or I don't get to choose who gets to appeal and who doesn't, that's for the courts to decide.

You really haven't thought this through at all.

Which is almost the point we're at isn't it?

They've appealed the sentence which means the defence have conceded it's a "safe" conviction. If it was procedurally flawed they'd be appealing the conviction

You really haven't thought this through at all

Oh, the irony! One appeal, yes. Endless appeals to the end of time? Not bloody likely.

I didn't say that they should be allowed endless appeals though.

I said :

"As many times as the defendant wants to or is allowed to under the current justice system."

Exactly. How many times is that? It could go on for ever.