Crime - defruading vs killing

dowie

dowie

dowie

Caporegime
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two stories from earlier... was just browsing BBC news and was struck by the differences in sentences

Nigerian sentenced in the UK to 13 years for multimillion dollar fraud:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17739388

British riot teen sentenced to 8 years for taking someone's life...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-17738958

And not too long ago the guy who burned down a furniture store got 11 years...

I'm not sure if I'm out of touch a bit (and I realise that both burning down a store and stealing money on that scale are serious) but I'm of the opinion that taking someone's life through a criminal act like that (whether murder or manslaughter) ought to warrant a harsher punishment than destroying property or committing fraud (even when done on a relatively large scale).
 
Well for starters the guy sentences to 8 years was done for manslaughter, he punched a guy causing him to fall which caused brain damage, the same could have happened if someone knocked in to him on the street entirely by accident, yet the person who he knocked in to is hardly going to be sent to prison.

Obviously in this case there was a clear intent to cause harm but chances are no actual intent to cause death. However, his actions DID cause the guy to die.

It's all about individual circumstances, you can't look at a case and say "Oh a guy died, it's murder, off to prison for X number of years" as that defeats the entire point of a justice system.
 
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Fenris said:
Well for starters the guy sentences to 8 years was done for manslaughter, he punched a guy causing him to fall which caused brain damage, the same could have happened if someone knocked in to him on the street.
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But he didn't just knock into him he chose to attack him, intended to harm him and that resulted in the guy's death... perhaps not being fully aware that his actions could result in death.

The furniture store could have burned down if one of the rioters had dropped a cigarette... but someone chose to light a sofa... perhaps not realising fully the consequences of burning the shop including the evacuation of nearby homes etc...
 
Fenris said:
It's all about individual circumstances, you can't look at a case and say "Oh a guy died, it's murder, off to prison for X number of years" as that defeats the entire point of a justice system.
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I didn't say that - I said that
taking someone's life through a criminal act like that (whether murder or manslaughter) ought to warrant a harsher punishment than destroying property or committing fraud
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I'm well aware that he was convicted of manslaughter not murder.
 
The problem I see, is that manslaughter like that in the OP doesn't carry a long enough sentence.
 
Punching an old man is a despicable act, and the fact that it directly led to his death is a tragedy, but it was a technically minor criminal act (simple assault) that had unexpected consequences, and as such 8 years seems an appropriate sentence.

The fraud case is completely incomparable, even putting aside the difference between violent and financial crime, one was committed in a highly charged atmosphere on the spur of the moment, and the other with clear intention over the course of many years.
 
8 years for murder (wrongly labelled as manslaughter), that's certainly a lot in the UK. I read about an almost identical case to this where they only got a 3 year sentence! Nuremberg judges would be turning in their grave if they saw the sentences the courts today hand out.
 
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It's the world we live in where money matters. Saying that most fruadsters do it becuase it's easy and not a high priority for law enforcements as the banks/insurance companies easily take the hit and pass it onto their customers.

Fenris makes a good point that it's all about individual circumstances. I could walk along the street not thinking and flick my cigarette and it happen to land in a petrol station forecourt, lighting the petrol fumes and incinerating 4 or 5 people. Now I would deserve to get punished for being an incompetent idiot, but is that worse than a lifelong criminal who intentionally preys on others for financial benefit in complete disregard for the law and other people in their society and will most likely start recommitting offenses as soon as they're released?

If anything I think intent and premeditation is not punished enough on the courts, even for minor crimes. A man who kills his wife after finding her in bed with another man should generally carry a lesser sentence than a man who finds his wife is having an affair and after having time to contemplate the situation and ramifications of any potential action decides to kill his wife and planned heaverly so he can get away with it.
 
Fenris said:
Care to justify that comment?
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The law states that death caused by an attack with intent to cause GBH is murder, clear cut.

Here with have an unprovoked assault with clear intent to harm and obvious knowledge it was likely to result in death. Which it did, killing him. By any common sense and rationality this is murder.

Though rationality and common sense is not always applied in these cases.
 
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Energize said:
The law states that death caused by an attack with intent to cause GBH is murder, clear cut.

Here with have an unprovoked assault with clear intent to harm and obvious knowledge it was likely to result in death. Which it did, killing him. By any common sense and rationality this is murder.

Though rationality and common sense is not always applied in these cases.
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So despite the fact that the only bits you know about the case being the tiny amount reported in the papers, you still know far more than all the assorted lawyers and judge who heard ALL the evidence? Really? How? Psychic link?


M
 
Meridian said:
So despite the fact that the only bits you know about the case being the tiny amount reported in the papers
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Wasn't the whole thing caught on CCTV?

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This is kind of why the US murder 1/2/3 system would benefit us here, this is a prime example of murder 2 not manslaughter, but because we only have murder/manslaughter its very hard to prove murder.
 
Meridian said:
So despite the fact that the only bits you know about the case being the tiny amount reported in the papers, you still know far more than all the assorted lawyers and judge who heard ALL the evidence? Really? How? Psychic link?

M
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Westlaw? :p

I do appreciate what the OP is saying to an extent. The sentencing for white collar crime seems at face value to be extraordinarily high.
 
Energize said:
The law states that death caused by an attack with intent to cause GBH is murder, clear cut.

Here with have an unprovoked assault with clear intent to harm and obvious knowledge it was likely to result in death. Which it did, killing him. By any common sense and rationality this is murder.

Though rationality and common sense is not always applied in these cases.
Click to expand...

Punching someone in the face isn't intent to cause GBH. Its puching someone in the face, happens just about all the time everywhere and people don't die from it.

The case that one person should have died after a punch to the face due to falling over afterwards and knocking his head too hard is not a murder as a result of an intent to cause GBH.
 
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