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news
Justice (Lonpicman, Wikimedia Commons)Ten months in jail for repeat driving offender who hit cyclist during 'lunatic' police chase
A driver who drove ‘like a lunatic’ in a stolen car on the pavement and on the wrong side of a dual carriageway before hitting a cyclist has been jailed for ten months.
Shane Dunwell had taken his girlfriend’s car without permission in October this year, so he could pick up a gaming handset from a friend.
When he was seen by officers driving the car in Leeds, a high speed pursuit ensued, which stopped eight minutes later when the police driver found a cyclist in the road screaming in pain.
Dunwell, who has a string of motoring and other offences already to his name, had hit the 46 year old cyclist with his girlfriend’s Fiesta, and the judge described it as “good fortune” that the cyclist or pedestrians were not killed, according to the Yorkshire Evening Post.
Dunwell, now of Dewsbury Road, Beeston, Leeds, pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicle taking.
Anthony Sugare, mitigating, said: “He accepts that what he did was totally wrong.”
Mr Sugare added Dunwell had contacted the cyclist to apologise.”
Judge Neil Clark said: “It is frankly lunatic driving of the worst possible kind. In fact I can’t imagine anything worse. This is a serious offence of its kind.”
Sentencing guidelines from the CPS for Aggravated Vehicle Taking (Dangerous driving/death/injury) show that the offence carries a maximum sentence of two years - rising to 14 years only if the driving causes a death.
A reduction in sentence for a guilty plea is usual.
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27 comments
Easy to say it's simple when you don't understand the infrastructure required to make that work as a very reliable system.
Sure there's a lot of infrastructure needed, but more than the infrastructure already needed to make driving feasible at all? More expensive than the damage caused by unlicensed killer drivers?
Simple technology would sort this out once, and for all.
When you get into a vehicle, you press your thumb against scanner on the dashboard, or look at a retinal scanner by the window.
This checks a central database, to see if the driver is licensed to drive. Car will not start without this check.
All cars are fitted with this technology by law.
No more problems!
So this guy gets 10 months for, basically taking a car without permission (stealing), driving without insurance, fails to stop when requested by the Police, drives over pavements to avoid stopping, hurtles down a dual carriageway on the wrong side, before coming to halt after putting a cyclist in hospital, and yet another guy who takes a car onto Brands Hatch whilst a race was on gets 8 months.
Whilst both guys were nutters, one of those punishments seems out of proportion with the other. The judge in the Brands Hatch case said "he endangered many lives as he branded his actions premeditated and inexcusable". Good knows what that judge would have thought of Shane Dunwell, and what sentence would have been handed down.
Whilst I agree that Judges should be able to use discretion at sentencing, such for pleading guilty, it seems to be that there is too much leeway being applied between Judges. It's more or less a postcode lottery as to your sentencing (based purely upon the Judge you get) which is wrong! Next we'll be having people decide what Judge that want based upon previous sentencing bias.
Said it before and I'll say it again and again. Things will only change once a politician has their family member mown down and watches 'justice' working its magic.
Surprising how quickly politicians can make things happen when they find the right motivation.
Clearly 5 deaths a day and multiple serious injuries isn't worth their time at present.
In true Top Gear style I'm just joking of course.
Can't believe that either anyone thought less than a year appropriate for this or that there is no mention of a ban or a fine as well. A lifetime ban is surely appropriate and a longer sentence to reflect the severity of the crime. Guess it may be down to the police or CPS rather than the judge to charge him with a more appropriate offence in the first place. In fact he was borrowing his girlfriends car so the vehicle taking but is rather technical. It's what he did behind the wheel when he was in which was a lot more than "aggravated".
I do think we have got so occupied with attaching labels to things that we provide opportunity for both reduced levels of responsibility for our actions and fertile ground for smart arse defence teams to play technical games and essentially insult bereaved families.
If you do something which clearly has high risk of causing death and devastating injury and an innocent party pays the ultimate price I have no regard for arguments of intent or otherwise.
This tackles the annoying issue of premeditation and also encompasses the scenario I like to use where I can walk down a busy street 'harmlessly with an automatic carbine' firing random shots about.
Driving like a dick is lethal and people die.
Firing a gun about is lethal and people die.
The main difference is if I try the whoops I didn't mean to shoot anyone excuse as I had no intent I'll rightly be hung out to dry.
Do the same after ploughing into a pedestrian and all manner of excuses will be lapped up as that must have been 'an accident' - it's a perfect example of double standards and it has to change.
Never mind the arguments about definitions of murder, or whether a car is a weapon.
From the reports,it's hard to tell why the driver wasn't charged with dangerous driving, and why the prosecutor didn't follow the manual and charge both dangerous driving and S.20 GBH
'Prosecutors should always consider whether to prosecute inflicting GBH alongside dangerous driving where serious injury results and the court's sentencing powers for dangerous driving may be inadequate.' That would have taken the potential sentence up to five years. It looks suspiciously like he has been plea bargained down to AVT.
Life time bans are not the answer stronger sentencing powers is the only way people will sit up and realise that if they commit these offences then they are going to go to prison for a long time.
If you have the mentality of stealing a car, driving over pavements and on the wrong side of a dual carriageway then a driving ban is hardly going to bother you is it ?????
More to the point, the number of reckless drivers that have been caught driving while already banned and uninsured. They don't respect a ban, so how is it a deterrent? And I'm also of a mind that prison may not be much of a deterrent either, so perhaps there's room to introduce real, thought-provoking, fines. Hit them in the bank account, where it really hurts.
Bastards would just claim poverty. The technology has to exist to stop them driving.
Driving while banned should result in a mandatory custodial sentence, a substantial fine, and a lifetime ban just to drive home the point. Sentencing for repeat offenders should follow the chess board algorithm: Automatic doubling every time. And no reduction for guilty pleas.
Driving whilst disqualified should come with a mandatory 4 year jail term, and that would be served consecutively with what ever else you were found guilty off, no insurance, dangerous driving etc.... Might put some off, the hard core..... well they'd just be locked up and the community would be a safer place.
I cannot understand why this is not attempted murder. Anyone with enough brain to tie their own shoelaces must surely know that the potential consequences of behaving like this include killing people, so what else is needed?
Do we really have to go through the definition of murder/attempted murder AGAIN?!
While I agree wholeheartedly with much tougher sentences and agree that 10 months is nowhere near long enough, this was not under any definition attempted murder.
Attempted murder or murder requires that a perpetrator goes out armed with a weapon and specifically looking to kill someone - in the first case deliberately trying but failing to kill, in the second case deliberately trying and succeeding.
This is a guy who took a car and accidently hit someone while trying to escape from the police. Could probably level all sorts of stuff at him (fail to stop, maybe driving while uninsured/DQ'd(if indeed he was?), TWOC etc).
But not attempted murder. If all the armchair lawyers could get that straight, it'd make threads like these so much easier.
All very well, but equally well, you do realise its not compulsory to agree with the prevailing legal definitions? You say 'attempted murder requires..this that or the other'. But people are free to disagree with that definition.
Personally I think that the tendency of most legal systems to put such huge emphasis on 'intent' rather than predictable consequences of an action, is in part there because it protects the interests of the powerful in any given situation. People in a more powerful position don't need to make such a concious effort to cause harm. Putting great emphasis on 'intent' in effect colludes with the bad behaviour of the more powerful groups.
Legal systems always to a degree reflect the interests of those with power in any given society.
(Also, this guy _was_ armed with a weapon, so the first part of your definition certainly applies)
To say he 'accidentally' hit someone is really stretching the definition of an 'accident'. "Hey I loosed off a burst of machine-gun fire in a shopping centre - but I only actually hit someone 'by accident'".
Did it not come up here recently that the US has the possibility of a more serious charge if someone injures or kills after repeatedly doing something they should have known was dangerous? Sounds to me that they have the right idea.
Its not an all-or-nothing thing, either 'intending to kill this particular individual' or 'an accident'. Calling it 'attempted murder' is clearly a bit of hyperbole, in understandable reaction to the fact that its a lot closer to that offense than the legal system seems to recognise.
He went out with a dangerous weapon, and consciously used it in a manner likely to damage someone very seriously. In the amoral universe inhabited by lawyers it probably isn't attempted murder, but in any realistic view of the world it's pretty clear.
Do we really have to go through the definition of murder/attempted murder AGAIN?!
While I agree wholeheartedly with much tougher sentences and agree that 10 months is nowhere near long enough, this was not under any definition attempted murder.
Attempted murder or murder requires that a perpetrator goes out armed with a weapon and specifically looking to kill someone - in the first case deliberately trying but failing to kill, in the second case deliberately trying and succeeding.
This is a guy who took a car and accidently hit someone while trying to escape from the police. Could probably level all sorts of stuff at him (fail to stop, maybe driving while uninsured/DQ'd(if indeed he was?), TWOC etc).
But not attempted murder. If all the armchair lawyers could get that straight, it'd make threads like these so much easier.[/quote
He went out with a dangerous weapon, and consciously used it in a manner likely to damage someone very seriously. In the amoral universe inhabited by lawyers it probably isn't attempted murder, but in any realistic view of the world it's pretty clear.
Sorry but making off from the police, driving like a complete fucking arsehole, equates to a premeditated action with a lethal weapon in anyones book.
This is surely yet another prime candidate for a lifetime ban. I can see no single reason why individuals like this are continually allowed to share roads using lethal weaponry at the expense of greater society.
The argument is simple. You were entrusted with arguably the world's most efficient killing machine and you have demonstrated on numerous occasions that you are an idiot. Society therefore no longer wishes to compromise the needs and basic rights of the many simply to extend convenience to one person.
Time a collective group of vulnerable road users such as cyclists, walkers and most definitely the horse community pooled resources (and in our motoring capacity also) demanded a televised Q&A with senior ministers from all appropriate departments and threw cases such as this at them and ask what the hell are they going to do about things.
They are all civil servants, accountable to the British public and given the kind of statistics we're all familiar with there is no good reason as to why they shouldn't justify their lack of intervention and unwillingness to engage with these country wide issues.
I am not belittling the terrorist threat at all, however government and the security services will leave no rock unturned to protect society from the statistically negligible chance of being blown up.
Two people die and the national threat level escalates, passports are seized, faiths are attacked, society leaders rally about to protect and educate the young from radicalisation, ministers pass new legislation in record time to enable powers needed to combat the horror.
So, we're not allowed to be blown up...that's well established. We can however be intimidated and bullied on a daily basis by people also with strong opinions and questionable attitudes using tonnes of aluminium and steel.
We can be killed and maimed. We are subjected to discrimination from protective authorities and as victims blamed and chastised by our ever ridiculed legal system.
Cheers to all the MP's out there, good job. If ISIS had any sense they'd just pop over here and borrow some cars before spending the day on masse driving about at high speed through pedestrianised areas killing and maiming as they see fit.
The police might attend I guess, Top Gear would invite them in for a chat to discuss the 'epic motoring adventure' and berate the fines they were all given before heading past the cool wall to look at the wonderful vehicles they used on their little jolly in blighty.
The tragic thing is the above is not actually an impossibility given the kind of leniency society as a whole is prepared to give to the 'poor old motorist'.
Yes, it's definitely time our ministers were called to sit before us all and explain just why our lives are so very dispensible.
So he got 10 months for stealing the car and Fuk all for the attempted murder of a cyclist...... sounds about right for our legal system.
How on earth can his behaviour be classified as "aggravated vehicle taking". Isn't there anything else in the book that they could have thrown at him? It is only through (very) dumb luck that nobody was killed.
I agree. All he took it for was to collect a 'gaming handset'.
What does that tell you about this spastic?
Well done for lowering this conversation with your derogatory comment it makes you no better than the driver of that car
Why is there not any moderators on this site to deal with offensive comments
Please dont use that terminology on this site.
If you take a look at the legal wording for AVT then this offence fits it perfect and in relation to previous comment you cant have 2 bites at the same cherry. You either charge one or the other.
I don't disagree that he shouldn't be allowed to drive again, but are you aware of how incredibly offensive it is to use the word spastic in the wrong context?!!!
The Judge lacks imagination.