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Last edited by: ifithelps on Sun 23 May 10 at 18:10
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Sympathy for all concerned. No winners there. 5 times the limit, mounted pavement, knew he had hit somebody, didn't stop - the court had no choice.
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6 years is fairly light with that much booze in him...and failing to stop and give any assistance...and the victim was on a pavement i.e. unlikely to have contributed much to it
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The guy's been dealt with under the fairly new offence of 'causing death by careless driving while under the influence of drink or drugs'.
Maximum sentence is 14 years, and while he's entitled to a discount for pleading guilty, he was also very drunk, so I reckon the sentence is a little bit light.
The 'simple' offence of causing death by careless driving carries a maximum of five years, so that scoop of drink has propelled him into a different league for sentencing.
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>>Maximum sentence is 14 years, and while he's entitled to a discount for pleading guilty, he was also very drunk, so I reckon the sentence is a little bit light.
In absolute terms I agree. Not much mitigation there, once he's said he didn't mean to do it. But how do you compare that with a lower sentence for an unprovoked stabbing, committed during a burglary, where the victim only survived by luck?
goo.gl/bYdt
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You've started something now manatee....thoroughly agree with you though. Maybe the Ant & Dec show will do something about with their new fangled coalition govt. Not holding up a huge degree of hope.
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...But how do you compare that with a lower sentence for an unprovoked stabbing...
With difficulty.
The nastiest/oldest of the stabbers got six years, 11 months, and the next nastiest/next oldest at 19 years got more than five.
The 17-year-old got three years.
Courts are very reluctant to give anyone under 21 a long stretch, particularly so in the case of a 'youth' - under 18 years.
I'm not saying that's right, just how it is. The case demonstrates this perfectly.
If the 17-year-old and the 19-year-old who got five years do the same thing when they are in their late 20s, they will get longer sentences.
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If the judge who sentences them, would be forced to suffer the same fate as their next victim, you can be sure that the sentence would be a lot longer.
Very easy to go easy on somebody when there is no likelihood that you will be their next victim.
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Nothing to be said about it.
You would have to know, but runaway alcoholics do put away astonishing quantities of alcohol and appear to function more or less normally. But then there are sort of blackout episodes. Apparently signalled in this case.
Punishment won't help that individual let alone revive the poor victim. But well-publicised jail will help to concentrate the minds of some of the more rational drunkards on the need not to drive when over the admittedly very low limit. That can save a lot of trouble.
Quite a lot of that in Scotland. I remember my BiL, then a police doctor there, being called in many years ago to examine someone at 10 or 11 in the morning after some incident. The guy was totally stinko, he said rather disapprovingly.
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Mmmmm.
Locally, they've upped the ante on D&D and other motoring offences... some well-publicised cases recently have seen:
1) Local rap star, on coke and booze, racing his mini against another mini down a suburban street, loses control, ploughs into crwod of schoolkids, kills 4.
Due to his racing and drug use, they've now charged him with murder, not the old 'culpable homicide'.
2) Bus crashes near Cape Town - 25 dead. Turns out it's Roadworthy certificate was revoked last October. Charged with murder.
3) 17 yr old driving minibus taxi evades cops, rides mayhem through the streets as they chase him, kills motorcyclist. Murder, attempted murder for trying to run over cop, plus various other offences.
The reasoning is that you KNOWINGLY went out there, knowing that your actions could cause death, but choosing not to heed to logic.
Same as shooting a few times into the air to celebrate new years. which happens. a lot.
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Looking into this one, I came across a 'death by' offence of which I'd never heard.
"Causing death while driving otherwise than in accordance with a licence, or while uninsured.'
Maximum penalty is two years in prison.
The point about this one is your driving is not at fault.
Circumstances might be you are trundling down a 30mph residential street at 20/25mph and a child darts about between two parked cars, and you run it over and kill it.
If you happen to have forgotten to renew your insurance earlier that week, then you stand to be done for this offence.
Falling foul of the "driving otherwise than in accordance with a licence' offence could happen in a similar incident, but this time you might be a learner not properly supervised, or driving something for which your are not qualified.
Again, your driving itself is beyond criticism, but you could still go to jail.
Nice, eh?
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>> Circumstances might be you are trundling down a 30mph residential street at 20/25mph
>> and a child darts about between two parked cars, and you run it over and kill it.
They're a kid, not a cat! :)
Last edited by: SteelSpark on Mon 24 May 10 at 09:49
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...It's a kid, not a cat! :)...
Never been keen on the word 'kid' for 'child' ever since I got ticked off for using it by my chain-smoking primary school teacher.
"Kid is a goat," she snapped, cigarette still in mouth.
Reckon she's right, too.
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>> Never been keen on the word 'kid' for 'child' ever since I got ticked off
>> for using it by my chain-smoking primary school teacher.
Well that's primary school teachers for you, finding it hard to grasp concepts such as a word having more than one meaning but having no shame in loudly "correcting" you as if you were a five year old. Well, that is my experience of the two primary school teachers in my family and their colleagues (comes from too much time spent correcting five years olds I think).
The question is though, did that teacher refer to the kids as "it"? For example:
"Circumstances might be you are trundling down a 30mph residential street at 20/25mph and a child darts about between two parked cars, and you run it over and kill it."
Doesn't quite work as well with primary school teachers
"a primary school teacher darts about between two parked cars, and you run it over and kill it."
I don't know where best to put the smiley so I will put it here -> :)
Last edited by: SteelSpark on Mon 24 May 10 at 10:24
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Reason I asked for comments on this is I know rather more about the case than was reported in the press.
Incident happened in Dec 2008 but he was never given a ban from driving. He has now been jailed (quite rightly) to serve a punishment. However, for the last 17 months he could have been driving on the road if he wanted, quite legally. Why was he not banned if he was seen as being a risk to the public?
Also it also brings into discussion, as been mentioned already, what are the benefits on jailing someone for this length of time . Surely its time we had an alternative that allowed a criminal to do community service, I mean real community service, and not incur the costs to the taxpayer of prison?
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>> Also it also brings into discussion, as been mentioned already, what are the benefits on
>> jailing someone for this length of time . Surely its time we had an alternative
>> that allowed a criminal to do community service, I mean real community service, and not
>> incur the costs to the taxpayer of prison?
Because the only real value of prison to society is to prevent/deter further offences - once the offences are committed and the victims are maimed or dead the damage is done, and the only thing that can be done is to try to stop it from happening again. For some reason the threat that "you will do real community service" does not have the same deterrent effect on scumbags as "you will go to prison". Mind you even that message is watered down when it is "worse case scenario, if you get caught is that you will go to prison for 4 years, and you'll probably be out in 2".
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Ian
Can we look forward to " Tales from the World Cup" from our own man on site?
Last edited by: henry k on Mon 24 May 10 at 21:45
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>> Ian
>> Can we look forward to " Tales from the World Cup" from our own man
>> on site?
>>
I do hope not. I browse forums such as this one in a vain attempt to avoid what is laughingly called the Beautiful Game.
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I am with you Harleyman.
I intended to say about life outside the foolball :-)
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No danger of that, lads!
IF I write anything about the Cup, it will be about the traffic fun and games we're going to experience on match days.
half of central cape Town will be closed, the 'upgrading the roads system'for the World Cup hasn't been finished, so there's a lot of halfbuilt stuff and contraflows to deal with; the centre of town will become one massive 'fan park', which is great, unless you (like I do) work in the cenre of Cape Town!
Last weekend, the Johannesburg powers-that-be decided to have two matches at the same time - football's local FA Cup final, at the new Soccer City stadium (76 000); and the rugby semifinal, between the Bulls and Crusaders, at Orlando Stadium (40 000), a few kms away.
Traffic mayhem, with people abandoning their cars on the motorway and walking, some folk missing the games altogether, and 5 hr journeys of 20km.
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>> a vain attempt to avoid what is laughingly called the Beautiful Game.
... tee hee Hogster... two and a half hours and no shower of bricks and bottles yet.
Ooo-er, is that them with bits of two by four and lengths of bike chain round behind that shed?
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''Also it also brings into discussion, as been mentioned already, what are the benefits on jailing someone for this length of time . Surely its time we had an alternative that allowed a criminal to do community service, I mean real community service, and not incur the costs to the taxpayer of prison?''
The benefit is that it takes that person out of circulation.
Why should we have an alternative to custody? How about expulsion from the country for a while, that'd be even cheaper.
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...Incident happened in Dec 2008 but he was never given a ban from driving...
Innocent until proven guilty.
What often happens, and I think it may have done in this case, is that an interim ban is imposed when the driver is convicted, either after a trial or by his guilty plea.
He is told he can no longer drive from that moment, but the length of his ban will be decided at the sentencing hearing, usually a few weeks later.
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Incident happened in Dec 2008 but he was never given a ban from driving...
Innocent until proven guilty.
Surely if he was a danger to the public, the court system should be able to deal with this in shorter than 17 months? Why can it not?
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...Surely if he was a danger to the public, the court system should be able to deal with this in shorter than 17 months?...
Many serious cases take about a year from date of offence to date the offender is sentenced.
This has taken a bit longer than usual, I agree.
To find the reason, we would need to check the case's journey through the hands of the police, the CPS and the courts, which is not really an option open to us.
But I don't imagine anything very unusual has happened.
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>> Innocent until proven guilty.
Yes, but common sense still needs to be applied until the case can be heard, if there is strong evidence and a reasonable risk of harm to others. No different, in principle, to holding unconvicted people in prison on remand. It may be that there isn't a legal framework in place for this, but there should be IMO.
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>> Why should we have an alternative to custody? How about expulsion from the country for
>> a while, that'd be even cheaper.
>>
Like Australia?
How about starting again - with Rockall!
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Killer drunk driver jailed - Iffy
