Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers have today been sentenced over their mindless destruction of the iconic Sycamore Gap tree.
Graham, 39, of Milbeck Stables, Carlisle and Carruthers, 32, of Church Street, Wigton were previously convicted of two offences of criminal damage - the first in relation to the felling of the 150-year-old tree; the second in relation to Hadrian's Wall, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, upon which the tree fell.
You can read full details of their arboreal thuggery in my earlier article.
Having lied their heads off during the police investigation and trial, the pair now acknowledge their involvement in the destruction of the tree. It now transpires that Graham was the driver and cameraman; Carruthers wielded the chainsaw.
Graham and Carruthers were each sentenced to 4 years' 3 months' custody in respective of the criminal damage to the tree; 6 months' concurrent in relation to the damage to Hadrian's Wall.
Readers will be undoubtedly be disappointed with that sentence, but it is in accordance with the relevant guideline.
According to that guideline even the most serious of criminal damage offences - category A1 offences - are unlikely to attract a sentence in excess of 4 years' custody, despite the statutory maximum being 10 years'.
That Mrs Justice Lambert has imposed a sentence beyond 4 years' is reflective of the severity and totality of the pair's offending.
Whether the sentencing guidelines are tough enough is an argument for a different day.
2 comments:
I am disappointed with that sentence. With prisons overflowing, jailing non violent offenders, who are no danger to the public, is mob justice. It will not be a deterrent to other drunken idiots, nor to builders and developers, or even local councils, who appear to be able cut down trees at will, even in the face of strong local opposition. I would rather have seen them spend a few hundred hours of their spare time with the Woodland Trust planting many thousand new trees to atone for their stupidity.
Personally I think it was worthy of custody, as the tree was not just a tree - it had far deeper reverence than that. When the statutory maximum is 10 years', I'm at a total loss as to why the guidelines have a cat A1 offence going only as high as 4 years'. Applying those guidelines rigidly, as most sentencers will, then no-one would ever receive a maximum sentence anywhere close to the 10 years' Parliament intended.
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