Take a look at this picture



This is Joe Paxton - he was driving a train in the Kidderminster area, minding his own business, when some morons dropped a slab off an overhead bridge.

The slab bounced off one train and went through the windscreen of the cab that Mr Paxton was in. He was knocked unconscious and received serious injuries.

The two oxygen thieves who performed this act of gross stupidity were caught and convicted. One of them was sent down for seven and a half years.

The defence team for this waste of good skin promptly launched an appeal against the sentence. No doubt paid for by Legal Aid funded by the honest tax-payers of this country - you know, the likes of you, me and Mr Paxton.

As a result of this appeal, Daniel Ratcliffe had his sentence reduced to six years, meaning he will be out in three. Free to "laugh and joke" about how he and his mate nearly killed a man.

If I were Mr Paxton and his family, I don't think words could describe how I would be feeling right now.

Thank you to the Court of Appeal for once again capitulating to the whims of the criminal and ignoring the victims of crime.

You can read the story here.

It really is time we had a change of Judges in this Country. Most are decrepit old farts, who don't live in the real world, and live in leafy lanes in the stockbroker belt, where crime is almost non existant.  I just hope the CPS can appeal this reduction in sentence, it makes a mockery of the law when some Scumbag can get just six years for nearly killing a man. It's time that a sentence can be increased on appeal, like the old days under Lord Justice Cassels who always increased sentences if a frivolous appeal was made.  In Cassels days there were very few appeals as the Crims knew what the result would be, extra time.

Criminal Damage with intent to endanger life or being reckless as to whether life is endangered carries (Section 1(2) of the 1971 Act) carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, so seven and a half years for a seventeen year old is a bit paltry to say the least!

There is also an offence under The Offences Against The Person Act 1861, which requires proof of intent to injure by throwing objects at trains. This also carries a maximum life sentence.

Whatever the offence, the possibility was there for a much, much longer sentence. However, the judge chose not to do this and the Appeal Court just compounded the problem.

                                         

Tony W - 100% spot on!

Why, so so they can sentence rape victims to being flogged?

Edited by benno - 21 February 2008 at 7:14am

I din't think this is simply as case of left or right do-gooders, but more like a case of the judiciary not appreciating the effect this has on ordinary people like you and I.

This also may be governed by Gordo's cronies and their sentencing guidelines. Political intrusion in the judiciary should never be subscribed to.

Life imprisonment was available and the offence should command a sentence nearer to that. The drivers live is in tatters and probably wont work again whilst the two convicts will be out in 3 years. 

That's true Tony.
maybe if we executed a few no hope lifers, the population would go down!

Edited by Graham - 21 February 2008 at 4:20pm

Oh, but it did. Just think of the number of murders we experience today and compare life now to life then. Any murder ran on the newspaper front pages for days, before disappearing to the inside pages for many more. Most murders today don't even get reported.

What happened is that the Labour government fiddled the figures (what's new). At the time the Home Office recorded a murder if the crime was classified by police as a murder. The Home Office changed this to only recording a death as a murder if a person was convicted at court of murder. If a person was seen to murder someone but never got caught, it was never counted as a murder.

Irrespective of what was the most accurate way of recording murders, this change resulted in a massive fall in the murders recorded by the Home Office. The government's statistics showing little change in the number of murders was actually an increase that was being covered up.