Police release "absolutely sickening" footage of cyclist deliberately rammed off bike, as men behind separate incident on pedestrian jailed

And of course the one who has been sentenced to 8 1/2 years will only serve five of that max...

Seems presumptuous.   More like have been raised surrounded by attitudes where no human life is precious.

We dont have to make it all about us all the time.

I do think he's got a point, to be fair, there is considerable overlap in the rhetoric used primarily by the right wing around immigrants/asylum seekers and around cyclists, namely that both groups are freeloaders, both are taking away space from decent "normal" citizens, both pose a danger to the rest of society with their behaviours, both have far too many resources devoted to them that society can't afford, both are part of an "other" that does not accord with our traditional rights and freedoms and so on and so forth. It's not a surprise to me that when such Neanderthals go out seeking people to whom they can cause harm they would choose to attack cyclists as well as persons of colour, they are both seen as part of the "them" that isn't "us" and so fair game.

Fair enough, but sometimes it is about us.

TBH I was just arguing based on their having run down a cyclist and a Black guy.

There's no evidence (yet) of their having randomly run down some white working class folk so clearly some humans rank higher than others, in their world.

I think we need to ask who radicalised them?

I agree, I would have loved to have seen a much longer sentence imposed but I have to say the judge seems to have followed the sentencing guidance for GBH with Intent pretty closely. Looks like a Culpability A Harm 2 starting point of 5 years custody with some additional time imposed for aggravating factors. That's pretty much where I ended up too from the limited info given. Although I would have loved to have gone with a harsher sentence, I am not sure you could without risking it being subject to a review and reduction given the guidance they have to follow.

I'm sure you have heard this before but CPS will only go ahead with a prosecution most likely to succeed. The bar for attepted murder or conspiracy to murder is very high - intention has to be proved. Without evidence to prove it then you would lose the case and they walk free. What they did have was the videos that proved it was not an accident. 8 and 6 years is still a lengthy sentence for the charge.

ragtag wrote:

The bar for attepted murder or conspiracy to murder is very high - intention has to be proved. Without evidence to prove it then you would lose the case and they walk free.

Well, they intentionally drove a car at two people: isn't that intent and proof that they wanted to kill them?

Whilst I sympathise with your position, I can understand that the prosecution would struggle to prove that there was intent to kill, and not that the intent was "merely" to cause grevious bodily harm (even if death was a possible outcome). 

I'm sure the law has precedents but I do wonder.  We obviously popularly consider motor vehicles as not being "lethal weapons" and being "under people's control" * BUT I'd say that's questionable.

And where there isn't doubt they've been deliberately used for harm (which appears to be the case here, regardless of whether direct "intent to kill" can be shown) I think more consideration may be due?  The level of judgement and control by the attacker cannot be great ("I carefully drove past at 70mph and nudged him") and the destructive potential escalates very quickly with e.g. speed.

You can kill someone with almost anything but with some weapons they have to be very lucky to survive (and even then the victim is almost certain to be trashed).  I think this would fall under (fairly) common knowledge - or is it more "motor vehicle exceptionalism" e.g. "no more intrinsically dangerous than a pair of boots"?

Presumably things like "they only set the 100kg bomb / thermonuclear device off next to him to scare him / make him jump" don't get the same benefit of doubt - as long as it can be shown that the perpetrator was basically mentally competent?  Or does that fall under a specific separate offense (thus avoid the question)?

* Under control - at least when the Incompentence Paradox is not in force e.g. "she couldn't help crashing into him..."

OnYerBike wrote:

Whilst I sympathise with your position, I can understand that the prosecution would struggle to prove that there was intent to kill, and not that the intent was "merely" to cause grevious bodily harm (even if death was a possible outcome). 

If they had stabbed their victims, would it be GBH or attempted murder?

eburtthebike wrote:

OnYerBike wrote:

Whilst I sympathise with your position, I can understand that the prosecution would struggle to prove that there was intent to kill, and not that the intent was "merely" to cause grevious bodily harm (even if death was a possible outcome). 

If they had stabbed their victims, would it be GBH or attempted murder?

As far as I can tell, it would depend on the specifics of the case. A quick google turns up multiple recent cases in which people who carried out stabbings have been charged or convicted of GBH with intent rather than attempted murder e.g. [1], [2], [3]. One of the top results was this pretty sickening case in which the defendent argued that he wasn't trying to kill his girlfriend when he stabbed her 15 times (the jury failed to reach a verdict and a retrial is due next year). 

As I said, the difficulty is that the prosecution needs to prove the intent was to kill. Obviously without actual mind reading this does have to be inferred from their actions to some extent, but it still needs to demonstrated what was going through the defendent's head. You might think that the only reason you would deliberately drive into someone is if you wanted to kill them, but can you be sure that is what the defendent was thinking? 

I haven't found that much information specifically on attempted murder, but this page has some interesting bits of case law that focus on intent in the context of murder: https://www.lawteacher.net/cases/mens-rea-cases.php. Murder actually has a lower bar than attempted murder; for murder, the intent only need be to cause grevious bodily harm. 

As I used to understand it, if the intention was to cause grievous bodily harm and the person died in consequence, then the crime was murder, surely then the punishment in this case where the intention was to cause grievous bodily harm, then the punishment should be the same as attempted murder.

Robert Hardy wrote:

As I used to understand it, if the intention was to cause grievous bodily harm and the person died in consequence, then the crime was murder, surely then the punishment in this case where the intention was to cause grievous bodily harm, then the punishment should be the same as attempted murder.

The law is slightly bizarre in this area: the first part of what you say is correct, if you set out to inflict GBH and a person dies as a result, that is murder, however if you set out to inflict GBH and the person does not die, it remains GBH, not attempted murder, even though you might have done exactly the same thing and it's just luck that they didn't die. For an attempted murder charge the prosecution must prove that the culprit had a definite intention to kill, not just inflict GBH.

Do not try and trivialise these attacks by branding them as part of another group to the one you identify with. The people who have carried this out are truly terrible people. We should all feel sad that we as a society nurtured them and failed their victims.   

I do think the sentence was light for GBH with intent it could have been more severe somehow they could not have been deemed as maximum culpability maximum harm category. 

https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/crown-court/item/causing-g...