I agree: the case crosses the custody threshold but she is a suitable candidate to serve her sentence in the community. Query, though: can a sentence of that length be suspended? I thought only sentences of twelve months or less qualified.
Hmmm.
I wonder how you'd have felt if it had been a father who had been speeding but had caused the same amount of damage?
Why is 'sending a message' in inverted commas? I thought denunciation was one of the central purposes of sentencing, and that society indicates its relative disapprobation through the length of the sentence. Glad to know it's just another bit of tabloid sentimentality. Also, I think by 'revenge' you mean punishment, a principle of British justice that is sadly as dead as John Fielding.
Spot on Bystander
Bystander, the undermining of 'revenge' as a part of the justice system may not be liked, but it is a major part of satisfying belief in the common man that handing over punishment to the state is 'fair' and 'worthwhile'. If a victim, or an associate of a victim, believes that justice has not been done, the odds of i) helping the system and ii) refusing vigilante action are greatly increased. It may not ever change the likelihood of the criminal reoffending, but revenge sure as hell reduces the weakening of the social contract between man and state.
Grabthemoney's explanation of the virtue of retributive punishment never occurred to me. Food for thought. Thanks.
Bystander: With respect, I must disagree with you (and probably with the sentencing guidelines) on this issue.
By the drivers own admission, this was not an accident; an accident occurs when something totally outside the drivers control causes an incident (e.g. sudden mechanical failure on a car with a good maintenance record, oil on the road resulting in a loss of control even when the vehicle is within normal speed limits).
These deaths resulted when the driver concerned wilfully or negligently ignored motoring laws designed to make driving safer for everyone, and acted according to her own impulses rather than within the dictates of the law.
To me, this constitutes manslaughter (at least), and should be sentenced as such. It should not be the courts business to take into account the impact a jail sentence may have on the convicted persons family; the criminal alone is responsible for all the suffering they cause to their victims and their own families.
Please note: I am a driver, and have a family; I would be more than happy to live with the sort of sentencing as described above.
The reason for the introduction of the offence of Causing Death by Dangerous Driving was that juries were reluctant to convict for manslaughter.
Well, a Xsara is actually designed as a smallish 5-seater. Clearly sticking seven children plus the driver in would be a bit silly.
But - it is fairly improbable that the car went gone out of control due to overloading, because at that it would *not* have been overloaded.
Consider - this was seven chilren aged between 11 and 13. Now I don't know what the average weight of an 11-year-old is, or indeed a 13-year-old, but I was about 8 stone (or around 50kg) when I was 12, and I've never been particularly lightly-built. Cars are designed for five adults of around 90kg each plus a certain amount of luggage. Looking at the similarly-sized (but much older) Volvo 340, for no other reason than it's the closest workshop manual to hand, we see that it has a payload weight of around 480kg. So, it's pretty unlikely that weight and balance were much of a factor here. Even so, without the requisite number of seats, you shouldn't have that many people in a car. Interesting enough Citroën, Peugeot and Mercedes used to sell an additional bench seat to mount in the boot of their estate models - one of my Citroën CXes had that, as did my old Mercedes 230TE. You don't seem to get those now, presumably because Espace-style bodies have taken over that market.
What's far more likely is that the roads were wet, the car had baldy tyres and was going too fast.
I still don't think a custodial sentence is entirely appropriate, though.
Personally I think prison entirely appropriate for this. She acted like a negligent idiot by putting too may people in the car, then drove like an idiot, causing a crash which killed three people. If she had crashed with only 4 passengers, all correctly belted in, then the outcome would likely have been that they all survived.
Her son will get her back after about a year. The parents of those three children will never get them back.
It's interesting that the road has now had a barrier installed at the crash site, and the limit is to be lowered to 50 mph.
Soon, no doubt, someone will whinge that this stretch of road is a rural dual carriageway, "so why did I get a ticket?".
Please tell me if I'm wrong but I think the UK does not have any concept of criminal irresponsibility.
I've often thought that in addition to almost all laws it would be feasible to have a charge of criminal irresponsibility tacked on to whatever some fool who has caused death or damage is charged with. This could be a multiplier of the sentence, or give rise to an additional consecutive term.
Just a thought.
Pretty inhumane to say that the court should not take into account the effect on the defendants family when one of that family is a victim of the incident.
The jail sentence is a further punishment upon her child (a victim) and that has to be taken into consideration, even if it does not totally remove the necessity for jail then it has to go towards limiting the sentence.
as for the manslaughter debate : the sentencing tariffs are about the same so it really does not make any difference. Manslaughter generally gets between 2 and 9 years as does death by dangerous.
and bystander, I assume this was an 'old' offence and dont think the judge will have had the option of the new style suspended sentence.Might be wrong on that one though.
Soon, no doubt, someone will whinge that this stretch of road is a rural dual carriageway, "so why did I get a ticket?".
Probably, yes, and they would be right to whinge. Mrs. Dublin crashed for precisely one reason - she was driving a dangerously overloaded vehicle, and made no modification to her driving style to account for it.
There is absolutely no reason to lower the speed limit on this stretch of road.
As regards the sentence, I tend to side with you. Mrs. Dublin was bloody stupid. Her first stupid act was to cram 7 teenagers into her smallish car, although if I'm going to be honest, it's nothing worse than I've ever done (most stupid act ever, 4 people in a Triumph Spitfire). Her second stupid act was to believe that she could still drive like a pillock with her car heavily overloaded. That, in my view, is the worse sin. Third, she allowed several of the teenagers to not fasten their seatbelts. Admittedly the child(ren) in the boot would have a problem, but there were 4 available seatbelts and only 1 child wearing one. That was also a mistake.
On top of all that, she got unlucky. A luckier woman would have slid a bit on a corner, realised that she had to me much more conservative with her car so heavily loaded, and backed off for the rest of the journey, or slid the other way and ended up in the hedge.
I think it's probably fair to assume that this particular woman won't do anything so stupid again, and also fair to assume that whether she gets jailed or not is unlikely to affect the chances of anyone else doing something daft. So I'd be inclined to side with you - suspend her sentence, give her the maximum community penalty, and jail her if she ever goes within 3 feet of a set of car keys.
PS. Sorry about the evil comma splice, but for some reason your website doesn't like colons.
This is where the "you can drive if you have a big metal spike in the center of the steering wheel" sentence comes in. Similar to the alcohol interlocks some countries use, and for a similar reason - the message is that if she does it again she dies.
I suspect she will reoffend again, give it a few months for the memory to fade, the justifications to kick in, and the irritation of having to obey the law to overcome the residual caution. It could have happened to anyone, it's not really her fault (look, they had to fix the road), she's perfectly justified in whatever she did.
"I suspect she will reoffend again"
Why?
>It's interesting that the road has now had a barrier installed at the crash site, and the limit is to be lowered to 50 mph.
>
>Soon, no doubt, someone will whinge that this stretch of road is a rural dual carriageway, "so why did I get a ticket?".
That's because that's road planning by kneejerk. You've commented often enough about how you dislike the government's "legislation by kneejerk".
The planning departments do pretty much the same. Everytime someone drives like a berk and causes a serious RTA they fiddle with road at that point pretty much on a whim, rather than ask the question "would the accident have happened if there hadn't been stupid behaviour?"
There ARE dangerous bits of roads that could be improved.
Instead, the funds are increasingly being spent on politically expedient "fixes" for problems which you can't fix by spending money on the roads.
It doesn't matter what you do to the roads, some drivers are so determined to have near-accidents every day that sooner or later chance will cause them to have one.
We could fix the stupidity instead of fake fixes to the roads, but that would require a concept of personal responsibility which this country has absolutely lost.
Bystander: Thank you for your insight. It's always appreciated.
Her actions formed a very large proportion of the responsibility in killing 4 people. She also admitted her responsibility. A community punishment in my eyes is close to saying "drive as badly and irresponsibly as you like, but when something goes wrong, admit it and you will be home free". That isn't justice. Especially when lives have been lost.
I agree with the judge in this case:
"In my judgment it would not be appropriate to suspend the sentence."
What I am failing to understand is why the starting point is 3 years and she only got 2?
And
If the maximum sentence for the offence is 14 years exactly how many people have to die to satisfy this punishment?
I dont think number of deaths equals (or should equal) number of years
Credit for a guilty plea reduces the 3 to 2.
14 would only be given after a trial to an individual who had driven in the most horrendous manner and had a horrendous driving record and was driving whilst dq as well (for instance).
A guilty plea would reduce it to 9 and a half.
We have had cases of that nature in Newcastle where drivers have received in effect the maximum, but they are rare, as they should be.
Lennie,
The Sentencing Guidelines Council has issued guidelines to the judiciary about the appropriate discount for a plea of guilty.
This varies from one-third for the earliest possible plea, down to about a tenth for a plea just as the trial is about to start.
The rationale is that (apart from saving huge costs) the early plea saves witnesses from the trauma of attending.
These days when I announce a sentence I might say "We think that the appropriate sentence for this offence is a fine of £300, but to reflect credit for your plea of guilty we have reduced it to £200".
Chapter and verse is on the SGC website.
As for max sentence, that is for the worst possible case after a contested trial. These are rarely imposed for obvious reasons.
Katie
You are absolutely right about planning by kneejerk. We live close to a dual carriageway that has a 70 mph speed limit and have friends that actually live on this road. They have to join traffic doing this speed and more when they leave their drive.
They have been told that the speed limit will never be reduced as it is a rural trunk road, despite there being around 50 households having no other route of egress from their properties, but every time there is a death the road is tweaked to make it 'safer' (actually, safer to go faster, but we won't start the Mr Toad argument again).
A couple of miles away, the speed limit on the same road was reduced to 50 because a pedestrian was killed and apparently that will do the trick in getting the limit reduced where my friends reside.
Any volunteers?
silvafox & bystander: What I fail to see in the sentencing guidelines is any impact of the toll on human life. It sounds like we are totting up the number of years based on adherence to our legal system rather then placing any value on life. That surely can't be right?
I still don't really understand how a minimum sentence can be given in this case. Incarceration is about punishment as well as protecting the public. That seems to be lost these days.
I have watched with dismay the knee-jerk road planning resulting from this accident. The installation of the crash barrier is undoubtedly an improvement, but was this really the most important road-safety improvement that our county required?
To then reduce the speed limit seems totally unnecessary and is, I believe, counter productive. It is true that speeds on that road have now been reduced, but it is also the case that the margin by which the limit is exceeded by the average motorist has increased dramatically. Motorists will only obey speed limits if they respect them. This change has done nothing to improve respect for speed limits.
When you witness the mass disobedience now taking place on that road and others like it, is it any wonder that people feel that it's OK to speed through built up areas in a manner that is every bit as reckless as this individual's mistake?
Lennie:
That's rather the point. Incaceration, in the case of Mrs. Dublin, is precisely about punishment. Her crime, in this case, was being bloody stupid. She overloaded her car, and then didn't account for the consequent reduction in the car's handling. There was no malice in her actions, no intent to do anyone wrong - just a lack of thought. Severe criminal punishment is not what is needed - save that for those who do set out to cause harm.
Mrs. Dublin does, of course, have a huge civil liability - her negligence killed 3 teenagers and another man, and has doubtless cost her insurers a considerabe amount of money. Even if she regains her driving licence, she may find herself unable to afford to pay the premiums that an insurance company will require of her.
Its not a minimum sentence
Its a guideline sentence : straight down the line.
"Even if she regains her driving licence, she may find herself unable to afford to pay the premiums that an insurance company will require of her."
On the occaisions when insurers have asked me the cost of incidents I've ended up having (honestly) to say "I've no idea."
It's either so long ago I've forgotten or I really don't know; Usually I know what the repairs to my car cost, but why would whoever ploughed into me tell me, anyway? That's between them and their insurer. They only find out what my car cost to repair because they're paying.
So "I've no idea" seems a valid response.
Bystander : Thank you for the tip re. reasons for the introduction of this offence.
Silvafox :
1. "Pretty inhumane etc..."
I believe that we must agree to differ on this point. The perpetrators own childs life is certainly not worth any less that the life of the other victims - should the sentence be reduced because the person responsible is also the parent? Sentencing, and the guidelines, are a judicious balance between the baying mob demanding a life for a life, and the kinder hearts who seek to forgive as much as possible. I do not believe in a "life for a life", but neither do I think that who the victim was should be a mitigating factor for reduction of the sentence.
2. "The jail sentence is a further punishment upon her child (a victim) and that has to be taken into consideration etc....".
With respect, I disagree. The person who has commited a crime must bear responsibility for the consequences of that crime. While I have every sympathy with the surviving child who will not have his mother with him for the next 12 months, his own mother must bear the responsibility for this loss, not the court. I stand by what I wrote in my previous post.
3. "..manslaughter debate : the sentencing tariffs are about the same so it really does not make any difference."
Thank you for this correction. I had thought that manslaughter could attract sentences of up to 20 years depending on circumstances (which to me strikes a better balance, and provides possibly more deterence).
To those who consider the sentencing in this case to be harsh, please consider the following example : Possession of an unlicensed handgun now attracts a mandatory 5 year minimum on its own. The gun does not have to be used to threaten or kill; simple possession is enough to guarantee 5 years inside. Do people whose negligence or deliberate actions or result in a loss of a life deserve a lesser sentence? If so, why?
Crivvens, an elephant in the room!
Average Woman Driver has about 30% more accidents per mile than Average Man Driver. She drives fewer miles though, and has her accidents at lower speeds in urban situations.
Interpretation 1: Urban driving is inherently more dangerous.
Interpreation 1.1: ...because towns are full of women drivers.
Interpretation 2: Average Woman Driver is a safer driver.
Interpretation 2.1: ...as long as she doesn't go above 30mph.
I wonder if Bystander would like to comment on this case.
No he wouldn't.
He hasn't heard the evidence, or read the reports.
Edited By Siteowner
Take into account the effect on the mother of being parted from her child by all means; do this in the same way you would consider the effect of imprisonment on someone's employment. The effect on the child of being parted from its mother is of no concern to the courts whatsoever, because the child isn't on trial. You've got to be that callous, otherwise you'd never punish anyone for anything ever.
Edited By Siteowner
' it's mother '? I can't believe I typed that!! I meant ' its mother ', obviously.
I've done it for you - happy to help!
Edited By Siteowner
Im not sure how you reconcile the sentence for killing 3 children and an adult, with this one
http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/
...1760269,00.html
Either one got too much, or the other too little, because it just canmnot be right.
Pascal
Sorry, aren't you comparing apples with bananas? On the one hand you have someone who made a bad mistake and killed four people. She did not intend to do so. On the other hand you have someone who for 18 months systematically broke the law. Knowingly and deliberately. That their sentences are similar doesn't mean their crimes bear comparison.
Bryn:
I'm not sure it's really fair to use the laws on gun posession (based on irrational nannyism) as a comparison with anything.
Sam : Hello!
You may be surprised to find that I agree with you on the issue of "irrational nannyism" regarding gun control.
This however is irrelevant to the point I was making, which was that there are offences in the UK which are punished more harshly than the negligent or culpable taking of a life. I am not trying to compare "apples with pears" - I used the handgun example because it has a convenient mandatory minimum sentence.
I do think that the legal system in this country sometimes appears to place less value on the lives of its subjects, than on offences which are invented for political reasons (e.g. the handgun ban following Dunblane - what better time to disarm law-abiding subjects - we all feel a lot safer now don't we, now that nanny has such good control over gun related crime on our streets..) /end political rant.....
My apologies to Bystander for drifting off-topic, I do get a little irate sometimes!
Lynn,
I do totally disagree with you.
On the one hand, you have someone who broke the law by overloading her car, and then made a mistake because of her incompetence and stupidity (funny how the fact that she was below the speed limit, but above the appropriate speed is glossed over), and killed 4 people.
On the other, someone who deprived the treasury of £90K, but did not kill anyone.
I did not say that his sentence was too harsh, I say that the 2 are not compatible.
Bryn:
"[..] there are offences in the UK which are punished more harshly than the negligent or culpable taking of a life."
Is that necessarily wrong? Causing someone's death through negligence covers quite a broad spectrum, ranging from a genuine accident where someone was a bit careless to situations where someone has repeatedly been grossly and wilfully negligent, causing someone to die. It seems entirely right that at the low end of the scale, being a bit careless should be less of a crime than, say, burglary.
Sam :
I agree with you that negligence covers a broad spectrum, but by definition this would EXCLUDE a true accident, which occurs due to circumstances outside a persons control or influence.
For example, a NEGLIGENT discharge due to mishandling of a weapon (resulting in a death) should be prosecuted as manslaughter; an UNINTENTIONAL discharge (resulting in a death) due to mechanical failure of a component in a well maintained weapon, should not be prosecuted at all, although there might be civil recourse against the company that made the faulty part.
The principle described above applies equally to the use of a motor vehicle, which can be a deadly weapon when used negligently or carelessly.
The careless or negligent conduct of the driver in this case appears to have been the major or sole cause of the incident which resulted in multiple deaths.
I must also point out that "being a bit careless" would have resulted in a charge of driving without due care & attention, rather than causing death by dangerous driving. This could correctly be described as minor negligence and, as you say, should be treated more leniently than burglary.
However, causing death by dangerous driving is not minor, and should be dealt with much more severely than burglary.
I therefore stand firmly by what I said : "there are offences in the UK which are punished more harshly than the NEGLIGENT or CULPABLE taking of a life" and yes, I am very uneasy about this although there are certain crimes (rape, drug trafficking, major fraud, misconduct in public office, to name a few) which certainly need long sentences as punishment and to deter others.
I agree with you that negligence covers a broad spectrum, but by definition this would EXCLUDE a true accident, which occurs due to circumstances outside a persons control or influence.
It's a continuum. There are things which you have absolutely no influence over (you're walking down the street, and are hit by a meteorite) but there are also things where you have some influence. Let's say you, as a pedestrian, are hit by a car. Now, maybe you were paying attention and the car came around the corner at 70mph, maybe you were in a bit of a daydream and stepped out in front of the car, or anything in between. Your level of attention is continuous - it's hard to draw a line and say "less attention than this is negligent, more is an accident".
For example, a NEGLIGENT discharge due to mishandling of a weapon (resulting in a death) should be prosecuted as manslaughter; an UNINTENTIONAL discharge (resulting in a death) due to mechanical failure of a component in a well maintained weapon, should not be prosecuted at all, although there might be civil recourse against the company that made the faulty part.
Arguably, pointing the business end of a firearm at anyone who you don't intend to kill is sufficiently negligent to warrant a manslaughter charge, even in the case of a "genuine accident".
I must also point out that "being a bit careless" would have resulted in a charge of driving without due care & attention, rather than causing death by dangerous driving. This could correctly be described as minor negligence and, as you say, should be treated more leniently than burglary.
However, causing death by dangerous driving is not minor, and should be dealt with much more severely than burglary.
The driving itself is just as dangerous whether or not a death results. In this case, Mrs. Dublin did not pay sufficient attention to the fact that her car would perform below par whilst overloaded, and so lost control.
The difference between what actually happened (she hit a car coming the other way, killing its driver and three of her passengers) and what could have happened (nobody was coming the other way, she ended up in the hedge and everybody was a bit bruised and shaken)is purely a matter of chance.
For most ordinary decent people, the realisation that they might have killed or severley injured someone is sufficient to make them change their behaviour for a long time. You don't need the threat of time in prison to make these people reform. By contrast, burglars typically don't change their ways when they come to the realisation that the DVD player that they are making off with actually belongs to someone else. They need incentivising with big punishments.
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