Thursday, January 23, 2014

Crime and Punishment, or Not

Welcome friends!

I just remembered a little news story I was going to comment upon last year so I suppose I might as well do it now but I must warn you it’s not going to be pretty.  The story that caught my eye involved two English teenagers aged 15 and 18 who attacked a homeless man (aged 54) and basically left him for dead.  Yes, it seems they tried to bash the poor man’s head in with a wooden table leg while he was sleeping out of doors or “rough” as our English friends might say.  But don’t worry, the story has a somewhat happy ending.  The doctors were able to save the victim’s life after getting him on life support and inducing a coma.  He was a bit of a mess though.  The doctors said his injuries were “similar to those suffered by a car crash victim.”  And it’s not all good.  He did lose sight in one eye.  But that’s a lot better result than what these two young men had intended.  Yes, the younger of the two little darlings was later caught on a security camera re-enacting the crime for his friends.  He said, “I feel high.  I feel on top of the world.  I want to do it again.”  His slightly older buddy was also flying high and bragged to his friends about killing a man after “hitting him forty times.”  (Well, that’s what he said.  Forty times.  Can you imagine?)  When confronted with the evidence, which included blood splatter on their shoes and clothes (as well as the face of the younger one according to witnesses), they claimed a friend had carried out the attack and they were just innocent bystanders.  The judge didn’t buy it and instead found they had committed a premeditated and entirely unprovoked attack on a complete stranger that nearly resulted in the man’s death.  He gave the younger of the two a sentence of seven years at a young offenders’ institution and the older one six years.  Too much, you say?  Don’t worry, they’ll both be eligible for parole after serving two-thirds of their sentences, so let’s say about four years each... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!