...appears to have exceedingly ugly fans:
The wife of a football fan left with permanant brain injuries was abused outside court today after 11 men were found guilty of offences related to the assault.
The video is at the link.
Mr Dobbin's wife Nicole emerged from Basildon Crown Court to speak to reporters and said: "Justice for Dobbo!"
But within seconds friends and family of some of the defendants began hurling abuse at the 46-year-old.
One man said: “Your old man was the most violent out of all of them.” Adding cruelly: “He’ll always be like that.”
Another woman shouted: “He went and smashed up 20-year-old boys.”
There is no evidence to suggest this is true.
One man doesn't usually attack 11 others.
Eight police cars arrived to disperse the mob, after which Nicole gave a calm and dignified statement to the media.
Just to disperse them? No arrests?
Speaking after the hearing, Det Chief Insp Martin Passmore addressed the disgraceful scenes outside court.
He said: “I want to make it absolutely clear that there is no information and no evidence that remotely suggests that Simon Dobbin is anything other than a thoroughly decent, upstanding man and he had done absolutely wrong (sic) on that day.
“He was a totally innocent victim of a pre-planned attack.”
Which should mean harsher sentences for the knuckledraggers, shouldn't it?
The men will be sentenced on Monday.
Let's hope Essex Police turn up when the relatives are coming out of court and make a few more arrests...
Can anyone (WOAR?) explain/hazard an educated guess at how 11 men can kick one man into a coma and a life thereafter as a vegetable and only be charged with 'Violent Disorder'? Surely the charge should be Attempted Murder ? All the commentators fervently hoping for a tough sentence should ready themselves for the low life being back on the streets within what 2.5 years tops? 5 years max for VD....
ReplyDeleteIf 11 of you kick a man into a coma you were trying to kill him or weren't 'boov'd if' he died. How can that not be attempted murder or GBH at the very least?
BD, not an expert on this as I was never CID but an experienced DCI tells me that to prove attempted murder you would actually need to prove that they intended to kill the victim, it's why there is a difference between grievous bodily harm and grievous bodily harm with intent. Have a read of the CPS guidelines http://www.worldrowing.com/events/2017-world-rowing-under-23-championships/event-information and you will see why attempt murder is actually harder to prove than murder.
ReplyDeleteRetired
Heaven knows how I put a link for world rowing in , it should have been http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/l_to_o/offences_against_the_person/
ReplyDeleteRetired
Sentenced this afto'. Expect complaints. Local radio is indignant.
ReplyDeleteBecause the charge was violent affray, the maximum term is 5 years. One man was deeply remorseful and pleaded guilty, essentially admitting the crime which will not be popular with the others. He was given a much lighter sentence and is probably going to need protecting from his 'mates'.
The other 11 had various terms but the main point is that Mr D has brain damage and is effectively no longer who he was before. In another age, he'd be dead, but the criminal law has not kept up with the reality that medicine can now keep people's bodies going when their previous life and personality has been deleted.
Law is based on a Victorian framework which acknowledges life rather than personhood, which was all very well at the time. If I were in charge of the world, kicking someone in the head would always be treated as an attempted murder because a) it can kill them and b) it can end the person, even if it leaves their frame shambling round. But I am not in charge of the world and in my framework there is simply no possibility that a kick to the head can be anything other than life threatening. It could be used in self defence (or maybe vicarious self defence), that that is all.
My best guess is that the CPS went for violent affray because they knew they could secure that conviction, whereas juries have been very unpredictable and obstinate for years about what they will believe about mentation.
I will never forget seeing PC Phillip Olds trying bravely to use the early muscle stimulation systems to get his paralysed legs back in to use at Mount Vernon hospital. Yet the jury accepted the argument that if you point a gun at someone, you might not MEAN to kill them. WTF. That has got to tell you something about juries and the shift in public opinion.
I doubt if that verdict would have been returned in earlier years, but there were - are - big confusions in thinking. After about half a century of drip-drip psychobabble, people were prepared to accept that actions are no indicator of mentation. I think that's tosh; actions are a very good indicator of mentation - but I am in the minority. (Kindly do not get me started on Freud).
Long term? Watch carefully for big sudden shifts this time next year, at the centenary of the end WWI. It was such a vast shock to the civic system that it inverted many structures of morality, and we are only just working through the implications of that.
Mentation is rightly required as an ingredient of a criminal offence and it is reasonable to ask if it is present. However, it is also reasonable to allow that in some cases, mentation can be inferred from actions. It is not supposed to be a loop-hole through which guilty people can wriggle just by hiding their thinking.
I might have been wrong about a lot of things, including the death penalty. It may be that in a legal system where the death penalty exists, it sends a signal across the society that life matters. I don't know. Maybe I'll have to think about that over the next year. I am open to arguments and although I am not in charge of the world, I am a tiny piece of it, as are we all. Perhaps we all need to think more about what we are assenting to or what we should be challenging.
Btw, if you want to know why we should tell the ECtHR that we will be treating its rulings as advisory only, and ignoring them where we think it defiles the concept of human rights, then click on this link about compo in 2005.
ReplyDeleteBut have sick bag handy.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4621993.stm
Thank you both Retired and WOAR. As a member of the legal laity I'm assuming that those dastardly Europeans, the wicked Bosch, have actually got a better law in this regard. For an attempted murder/serious GBH charge the DA only has to show that the perp 'was not bovvered that his actions might kill' (that's not a direct translation but is surprisingly close), which is a lot easier to prove I expect than 'intent to kill'. I know this for a fact because I was charged with exactly that ie 'that I did intend to kill or wasn't bovvered if the person died because of my actions' (again translated out of the German legals)....and as the bloke in question had just tried to kill my wife and baby child the DA would have been able to prove 'not bovveredness' with little difficulty...until my lawyer pointed out that I helped keep the perp alive until the paramedics got there-that I was arrested whilst holding a saline bag aloft with my other hand putting pressure on one of the wounds. Which actually raises another German legal thing-the concept of 'stepping back'. Even if the DA had proved I was 'not bovvered' as I stabbed the guy, the fact that afterwards I 'stepped back' from letting him bleed out is a powerful mitigation and would have reduced the charge from Att.Murder/Serious-as-fuck-wounding-not-bothered-if-the-scrot-pegs-it to 'normal' GBH.
ReplyDelete"Surely the charge should be Attempted Murder ? "
ReplyDeleteEven if that's what they were charged with, it'd only be a bargaining chip to get them to plead down...
"...attempt murder is actually harder to prove than murder."
Well, yes. In murder, you've got an undeniable corpse!
"Local radio is indignant. "
I should be speechless at that, but since I live in Essex...
"If I were in charge of the world, kicking someone in the head would always be treated as an attempted murder..."
Me too. As would multiple stabbing. Or even singular.
"It may be that in a legal system where the death penalty exists, it sends a signal across the society that life matters."
In a society where abortion on demand and the Liverpool Care Pathway can exist, good luck with that!