Mitigating, Ruth Armstrong said her client, who used to live in Victoria Street in the centre, had many glowing references and the offence was completely out of character.
She said he was described by others as "decent", "respected", "good- natured" and "friendly".
And what did he do?
Prosecuting, Rachel Garstang said at about 5.30am the 16-year-old was fighting with another teenager he knew from school, when the 17-year-old got involved.
She said the 16-year-old pushed the 17-year-old away, before the latter pulled out a lock-knife and stabbed him in the side.
The victim initially thought he had been punched, but he started "bleeding profusely".
The court heard he was in surgery for seven hours as his spleen had to be removed, leaving him more susceptible to infection and having to take antibiotics for the rest of his life. The wound also damaged one of his kidneys and even after nine days in hospital he was still in pain, Ms Garstang added.
*sigh*
The court heard he had a previous conviction for assault, but nothing knife-related.
Another justice system triumph!
7 comments:
Mona with knives, free to roam Bristol centre. No news then?
"And in this case M'Lud, I'll be playing number five hundred and thirty nine from the Enid Blyton Bumper Book of Mitigation" ...
Yup, some folk are really dumb.
Another justice system triumph!
Well .... he did get a five-year detention sentence .... so I'd say on balance the system has worked.
And the more mitigating rubbish the defence lawyers trot out, the less notice will be taken of them.
If you lined all the mitigation excuses up end to end you would see that no crime had ever been committed before, all actions are out of character, no one wanted to do anything bad and everyone is very sorry in court as they are all lovely people who just happened to have been under stress or worried or had a drink too many and really wanted to be off drugs and having a knife on them was incidental and they never intended to hurt anyone because they love people so much.
If you lined all the mitigation excuses up end to end...
... they'd reach from Nüremberg to the Hague and back again.
"And the more mitigating rubbish the defence lawyers trot out, the less notice will be taken of them."
Ah, if only that were true. They still seem to hold too much weight with the judges!
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