The guy who fired a sub-machine gun at rival gang members in a Liverpool pub on Christmas Eve, killing an innocent young woman, was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 48 years. That heavy sentence was presumably because of the gangland element.
I think that’s about right.
I struggle to understand though how a man who, over a period of months, beat a toddler to death got only 28 years. Although I don’t support the death penalty intellectually, emotionally I can’t help thinking that the sentence that fits that crime involves a rope and a trapdoor.
I also don’t support the witch-hunt against motorists who exceed ridiculously low speed limits by a small amount. A good example is the Torquay ring road, built as a dual carriageway at great expense and then lumped with a 40 mph limit. It’s one of those highly engineered highways with 40 or 50mph limits which are joined by country tracks carrying the national 60mph limit. The police have recently caught hundreds of drivers exceeding an unnecessarily low limit.
What I don’t understand though is how a man who drove at 125 mph with one hand, weaving in and out of traffic, while filming with his mobile phone in the other hand, got only 12 years when he smashed into a broken down car on the hard-shoulder at 90 mph killing a pregnant woman. She also had her 2 sons and a nephew in the car although by some miracle, they survived. The maximum tariff for causing death by dangerous driving is 14 years and I fail to see any mitigating factors in this a case.
I despair sometimes.