Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Student who stabbed boyfriend may avoid jail as it would ‘damage her career’
So far the Guardian's columnists have been strangely silent. :nod:

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Yes, but if you read the article, then she will never be allowed to become a surgeon as her criminal record will bar her from being registered by the BMA. so he brilliance will all be wasted in any case, throw her in jail for a few months.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

"Almost impossible" it said. Maybe they'll make an exception for her, after all the university is accepting her back "because she “is that bright” and has had articles published in medical journals." :blink:

No doubt the Guardian will get around to some 'opinion' pieces about it.

Had it been a talented man assaulting his partner we'd have seen a few articles by now about how men are allowed to get away with this, how the judiciary is forgiving of violent men etc.

I suspect if they do run one it will be along the lines of how this is different.

I love the Guardian but it's becoming increasingly guilty of double standards.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

She seems to have a typical surgeon personality. ;)

I doubt her brilliance would be a factor if she were anything but a posh Oxford student.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

I don't think it's the Guardian who's guilty of double standards here. It's the magistrate who decided not to jail a violent offender simply because she's "smart"

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

It wasn't a magistrate, but a judge (there is a very large difference between the two).

In any event, he seems to have done his job properly by weighing up the evidence, looking at the options available to him and made his decision accordingly. If the crown believes that what he did was wrong, they can appeal. Very rarely in sentencing, is there a one size fits all approach and I am happy about that.

There is nothing to suggest that she definitely won't go to jail and he appears to be taking a "wait and see" approach. Seems perfectly sensible to me.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Where did the article mention that she was "posh"?

From my reading of it, it sounds as if the opposite was true and that she has had a "troubled life."

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Brilliance aside, would you really put your life in the hands of someone like that?

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

I meant for the lack of an associated opinion piece about DV and/or not treating the matter seriously or how the courts treat male perpetrators, which they would almost certainly have run by now had the offender been male and victim female.

As it happens the paper seems to have resolved any dilemma by "removing" or hiding the report. It's now filed under 'crime' which is not one of the categories on the main page nor even in the list of links by subject when one opens the category menu.

So unless you know the report is there, you won't find it. :(

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Well, for someone with ambitions to be a surgeon, she at least got some practice. :eek:

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

When I was a solicitor in the UK, I used to practice in the medical malpractice arena. When I first came to Canada, I did so here too.

One unfortunate downside of such practice is that one is reluctant to place one's life in the hands of any surgeon.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

I can only go by newspaper reports but waiting and seeing for four months doesn't seem the usual approach in such cases.

"Adjourning for reports" isn't uncommon but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The judge himself used the word exceptional to describe it.

Of course, that doesn't make it wrong, but she's not the first first offender is she? Is waiting and seeing for 4 months the norm for first time offenders?

It might be a tad presumptuous but one might conclude that someone who actually lives in Italy with her mother while attending Oxford University is perhaps a little "better placed" than most.

And that's without looking at the man representing her.

For decades Jim has represented celebrities, high net worth individuals (and many of their children), company directors, corporate clients and sports stars both in the UK and across the globe.

Posh, I reckon. :nod:

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Plus she's quite fit but at 24 she doesn't want to spend her last few "doable" years in prison. That'd be a waste.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Posh people can have troubled lives too

That article isn't my only reading on this subject.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

I don't believe it is normal. I read the article on the BBC's site and I can't remember if this article, or the BBC's one, made reference to the fact that she had been abusing drugs. As she has been told to stop using them and, one assumes, she will have to attend for drug screening to ascertain that she is in compliance, I assume that, if she is able to show that she is attempting to turn her life around, she will give shown more leniency than if she doesn't.


Presumptuous it is. Her mother and father may have divorced and, for reasons unknown, her mother may have moved to Italy. Who knows?

Not everyone that attends Oxford is wealthy but most, I accept, are intelligent. She may be incurring huge debts to enable herself to attend.

As for her lawyer, he may have taken this case on pro bono, or via legal aid.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Oh, of course.

But tell me, how did they find him? Just by looking up QCs and persuading him to do it?

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

More googling.

Attended £16000 a year private school in Milan.

Lives in Italy. Do non UK residents qualify for legal aid?

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Having never had anything to do with criminal legal aid, I don't know.

Do you believe that foreign students studying in the UK should be denied legal aid if accused of a crime?

Do you believe the Judge made an incorrect decision?

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

When I was in England, one could only instruct a barrister through one's solicitor. It wasn't possible to directly retain a barrister. I believe that that has now changed.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

So.. we have a young, white, attractive, 24 year old Oxford female student who drinks, takes drugs and attacks people with a knives and other household items.

As part of her defence, we are told she is intelligent and has a promising career as a surgeon and that this should influence her sentence, one that would normally carry a custodial sentence.

Imagine if this woman had been poor, black, unemployed on benefits and had stabbed her black boyfriend.

I doubt that the 'smart and future expectation' argument would hold much water in the latter case and yet we don't know how the latter's life would have evolved.

Society would have us believe that the law is blind but apparently it isn't deaf or as blind as it should be. The government is clamping down on knife crime in general, but apparently some knives aren't quite so dangerous as others. A sharp scalpel in the hands of this woman might make a cut too far.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Surely it's a just a drunken row that got out of hand. If the guy didn't sustain serious injury then the judge's decision to wait and see makes some sense.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

She admitted the crime so there was no defence.

Her lawyer made submissions in mitigation of the sentence and there is no suggestion that she won't receive a custodial sentence.

The Judge simply deferred his final sentencing to a later date and, as you will have noted, has imposed interim conditions upon her.

What is not sensible about that?

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Were she not posh I doubt she'd be called Lavinia. Nonetheless, non-posh, non-custodials:

Suspended sentence for woman who stabbed partner in the chest with a steak knife after drunken row | Burton Mail

Thornton Heath man who repeatedly beat his girlfriend given suspended prison sentence | Croydon Advertiser

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Points taken. We wait and see.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Posh people look different. The way they hold their head, sit. She's definitely posh.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

I'm having a déjà vu/plus ça change sort of moment over this one... :(

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Irrelevant to the topic.

But everyone ishould get defence and fair trials. Not everyone gets a top QC.

He hasn't made one.


ETA....damn...you successfully distracted me from the bit about her being posh. Well done. :sneaky:

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

What topic is that? You were the one that pointed out that she lived in Italy. I simply asked whether, in light of that comment, you believed she should not be entitled to legal aid (I have no idea whether she did or not).

Do you understand what a QC is? How does one become a "top QC", as opposed to just a QC?

Do you agree with his decision to defer the sentencing?

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

And vice versa.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Yes I did. I'm quite surprised you appear to have missed the relevance of it.

You are always so careful with your own words yet you seem slapdash with those of other people. :(

The original topic was that of alleged double standards in the guardian.

It then moved to whether she was posh and you disputed that suggesting she may have been a legal aid recipient - last I knew that included an assessment of one's inability to pay, so mention of her private school fees of £16000 and living with mummy in Italy made legal aid doubtful on both residency and income grounds.

Family wealth and connections. :nod:

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

:lol:Lavinia Woodward, (Christ Church College, Oxford) punched and stabbed her boyfriend a Cambridge University student.
I am saddened to read that the relationship between two such august institutes has reached such a low point.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Bamber Gascoigne can't be happy.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

As a Cambridge man I am devastated:lol:.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Duh, well of course.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Well, they did one. Simon Jenkins, though, rather than one of the women writers. It does indeed say that this is different, but not in the 'different' way I cynically expected.

Essentially it wonders why such consideration is not extended to ordinary people instead of just those with 'connections'.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Good article. Simon Jenkins does have an eminently sensible take on things.

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

An update.

Well two actually.

She was, indeed, given the non-custodial sentence...in September.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017...bing-boyfriend
But now she's appealing against the sentence. :blink:
Oxford student appeals against suspended sentence for stabbing boyfriend
Maybe just award her damages and an OBE. :nod:

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

This reminds me of another bloody sob story:
Teller involved in bank robbery at risk of deportation and should get lesser sentence, says lawyer - Calgary - CBC News

Re: Violent student may avoid custodial sentence due to talent
 

Risky, she might get longer.