Wednesday 18 May 2011

The Vagaries Of The Justice System

Two strangers who killed a female motorist while racing in high-performance cars have been jailed for a total of 12 years.
Six years each? Well, it’s not much, I suppose, but it’s better than nothi…

Oh, wait:
Sheffield Crown Court heard Cox took a corner at high speed, ploughing into the driver's side of Mrs Bryce-Stephen's vehicle. The mother of two died from multiple injuries at the scene.

Chevens fled the accident in his car.

Cox, who admitted the offence at an earlier hearing, was jailed for five years for causing death by dangerous driving.

Chevens, who was found guilty after a five-day trial, was sentenced to seven years for the same offence.
So, the driver that hit and killed her got a lesser sentence than the one that didn’t? Was that just because he admitted guilt, or was there more to it?
Cox, of Stannington, Sheffield is an electrician with no previous convictions.

Chevens has convictions for dishonesty and supplying drugs.
Could that be it?

3 comments:

Gaijin San 21 said...

Sentencing in criminal cases is a complex and difficult matter, and given how poor the accuracy of any reporting of court cases is it is very dificult to judge how and why sentences were passed without the transcript of the remarks made by the Judge.

On the bare information we have here it would appear that the driver was initially deemed to be liable to a much longer sentence for his involvement but that the operation of the principal of credit for a guilty plea has reduced this to a level below that of his co-accused. The sentencing Judge will have had in mind parity of sentence between the parties but this is only one factor he would have to consider.

If anyone is genuinely interested in finding out how and why these sentences were imposed they should obtain a transcript of the sentencing remarks from the Court logger.

Lord T said...

Personally I think both sentences were not tough enough.

However,

One guy killed someone and was racing.

One was racing, had previous and ran.

So when you add them together you get the sentences that were dished out. Obviously having previous and running trump killing someone.

JuliaM said...

"...the operation of the principal of credit for a guilty plea has reduced this to a level below that of his co-accused."

Interesting. One of those little wrinkles where the justice system (or at any rate, our operation of it) seems to lack common sense.

How can it possibly be right that the man who killed her receives a lesser sentence than one who was also involved, yet did not kill her?

"Obviously having previous and running trump killing someone."

Unbelievable, isn't it?