Words Fail Me.....

[Gettingagrip]

Man kills wife over roast beef dinner

Bloody hell.

So if you hit your wife hard enough to kill her it's OK because you haven't been caught hitting her before?

Carte blanche for middle class men up and down the country to get pissed then slap their wives around for cocking up the dinner then.

Disgusting.

You have a dim view of 'middle class men' if you think reading this story will turn them into wife-beaters. Manslaughter covers a wide spectrum. It is not 'carte blanche' for domestic violence. It is appropriate that someone of previously good character who delivered one blow that would not normally result in a fatality should be convicted of manslaughter. In 99 out of 100 similar cases, the woman would have survived the attack and the man would have been charged with assault.

I wasn't referring to the readers, Chil1234, I was thinking more of the legal system. I read it as the judge saying oh well never mind.

Just didn't think the message was made that DV is wrong whether someone dies or not, the judge's comments seemed to trivialise the situation IMO.

I agree with Sidge. Even for manslaughter the senyence does seem to be a bit of a joke "lads, don't worry if you accidentally kill your wife while beating her up, it's not a big deal" seems to be the message here.

sentence, obviously.

A conviction for manslaughter and 18 months in gaol is not trivialising the situation. It is not 'oh well, never mind'. Any sentence for manslaughter has to reflect the level of intent and take the circumstances surrounding the offence into account. The plea of self-defence was rejected. The judge even made a point of saying that 'there was no suggestion of previous domestic violence'. That is a very clear message that DV is wrong, punches are not an acceptable answer to plate-throwing and that if there had been a history of DV, the sentence would have been longer.

Given that it's been established there was no history of DV, you could easily flip this story around and it would possibly look rather different. There's an argument, she's throwing plates, a broken plate severs an artery, she panics and drives off... and 20 minutes later he's dead.

No intention to kill, plate thrown in the heat of the moment.... 18 months sound realistic in that context? Unconditional discharge?

I see what you're saying, I suppose the fact that 18 months isn't actually 18 months doesn't help in my mind.

It just seems such a short sentence when a life has been taken.

It's the judge's comments, though.
All that stuff about being 'respectable' and 'successful', and not being a case of 'yobbish violence in public'.

It just makes me shudder.

To me it reads that the judge was thinking that because it's a professional solidly middle-class man, hitting his wife so hard she dies, but behind closed doors, it is less of a crime than if an unemployed man had done the same thing in the front garden of his council house...

Spot on Nightlark.

And actually if the wife had killed the hubby with a plate as suggested up thread, 18 months is not enough.

And the judge's comments are a disgrace... on several levels.

Yes, Nightlark - that got me too - "Oh it's ok, you're One Of Us, a hardworking professional type who would never normally hit his wife [over overcooked roast beef!] so we won't judge you as though you were some council estate chav who is always belting his wife"

Gah! HOwever hard must he have hit her to rupture a blood vessel in her neck! There is no mention of her having a weakness there that could have gone at any time, that would be mitigating circumstances indeed but STILL doesn't get away from the fact that he HIT her that hard!!

What would be a standard jail term for GBH? Anyone know?

A little misleading to describe it as "killing her over a roast-beef dinner."
If we are to take the facts as they're reported they had a fight over the dinner etc which ended with her throwing plates at him and him hitting her causing her death.
Manslaughter sounds like the right outcome to me, would question the length of the sentence and how wise the judge was for delivering such a favourable soliloquay to someone who has just been found guilty of a criminal offence which involved killing his own wife(especially one which definitely has a ring of "it's ok, you're one of the good guys" ring to it)

But as my original point goes the way this thread title described it, one would imagine that upon being presented with a slightly over-cooked dinner he immediately proceeded to beat and kill her as a direct punishment for that transgression.

This isn't an isolated case. Isn't there a legal guideline about "unlucky punch" killings where there was no intent to kill and a single blow which, by complete fluke, causes fatal injury. It applies to anyone, not just husband/wife, man/woman etc.

Although I'm sure it was changed a couple of years ago.

We need a legal person to clarify

He didn't intend to kill her, so it's not murder.

Doesn't make it at all right, but he was having plates thrown at him.

Agree though 18 months, even if he had "only" hit her, rather than killed her doesn't seem enough.

What would you have expected the wife to get for the plate throwing? i.e. if she'd been here to press charges for the assault, surely he would have issued a counter claim (or whatever the legal terms are)

The judge mentions 'one blow manslaughter' cases, and they are quite common, and the sentence here seems in line with similar cases.

For instance, take this case:
www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/s/2050898_labourer_jailed_for_punch_death_manslaughter

"A LABOURER who killed a disabled man with a single punch after binge-drinking at the Black Cherry Fair in Chertsey was jailed for two-and-a-half years on Friday.

Joseph Sewell, 39, downed at least 15 pints of lager before launching an unprovoked attack on 59-year-old Keith Hanna.

Mr Hanna, who had speech problems and used a frame to walk, had been sitting in his car outside a fish and chip shop in Chertsey
CCTV footage played at the Old Bailey showed Sewell, along with Nathan Scott and James Hussey, walking towards Mr Hanna's car in Guildford Street at around 2.30am, and then beer being thrown into the vehicle.

Prosecutor Jennifer Knight said: "Towards the end Joseph Sewell can clearly be seen throwing a punch or jab at what must be Keith Hanna's head."

Mr Hanna was discovered by the landlord of the Kings Head pub, Thomas Spurling, and taken to hospital."

So in that case it was (a) a hate crime (b) unprovoked, and (c) the victim was left to die.

So in comparison a year less doesn't seem outrageous.

Obviously I would suggest much longer sentences for both parties, but I'm not sure this is a case of being lenient to DV perpetrators as much as a generalised tolerance of crime in this country.

Apparently the Lord Chief Justice wants longer sentences for 'one punch' deaths, in line with 5 years that you'd get for death by dangerous driving and that seems fair enough. When you choose to hit people there's a risk that you will kill them (the 'eggshell skull' in law) even if you didn't intend that, and you as the aggressor need to take responsibility for that.

definitely different rules for "respectable" people.

football "fan" gets 4 years for one punch killing

I was at the game, both parties were looking for trouble

oo, that sent shivers down my spine - I used to live near there! Don't know any of the people involved, thankfully but still.

Words fail me too. How is his professional life and previous success a reason for such a lenient sentence?

Jesus.....

This does say - domestic violence is no big deal, shame you killed her, but you're an alright kind of guy so i'll give you a cursory sentence because I have to.

That's from 1998 create! Sentencing has changed a lot since then.

Two-and-half-years seems to be the standard:

2.5 years:www.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/news/punched-self-defence/article-2116143-detail/article.htmlnews.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/humber/8683222.stm
2.25 years: [[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1172091/Jailed-Road-rage-motorist-killed-driver-single-pun ch-hard-shoulder-M1.html]
18 months: www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/2008/10/03/distraught-family-hits-out-over-sentence-84229-2 1957999/

This case fits the guidelines for 'one punch mmanslaughter':

'The Court of Appeal agreed that the terms 'one punch manslaughter' will mislead unless:

• strictly confined to cases where the offender acted under provocation,
• death results from a single blow with a bare hand or fist
• and, but for the death, the offence would have been charged as, at the highest, assault occasioning actual bodily harm. '

www.attorneygeneral.gov.uk/NewsCentre/Pages/AttorneyGeneralwelcomes%E2%80%98onepunch%E2%80%99legalch angesandsentenceincreases.aspx

fixed link: 2.25 years ch-hard-shoulder-M1.html

let's try that again, fixed link: [[ www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1172091/Jailed-Road-rage-motorist-killed-driver-single-punch-hard-s houlder-M1.html

OK then.....'man kills wife over washing up after roast beef dinner'.

I mean...how hard do you have to hit someone to kill them?

It's the judge's comments that I thought were terrible...and of course he will not spend even 18 months in prison.

Chucking plates is one thing....(not to be condoned obviously), but belting someone upside the head so hard that you KILL them...well...

It was an accident.

It makes no difference what so ever what the argument was about. The man is a piece of shit to hit his wife, but i dont understand crying out for a longer sentence. His wife is not coming back if you lock him up for longer, and it will cost the tax payer more. She could easilly have caused him to die by plate: Being hit in the head by a thrown object is a sadly common way to die.

The fact they are married does not change the fact this is manslaughter either.

Personally, I would hang the asshole, but most people seem to like keeping people behind bars untill they die instead.