Monday, October 20, 2008

Judges who can't see the wood for the trees

A judge was shocked to find that a teenage rapist had been hooked on cannabis since ten and was snorting cocaine at 14, according to the Mail.

Sentencing the teenager at Leeds Crown Court, the judge said: 'When I see that from the age of 10 you have been taking cannabis on a regular basis and even at 14 you were taking cocaine and ecstasy, any right-thinking person is going to think there has got to be something wrong in our society.

Jordan Webster, 15, who has a shocking catalogue of 63 previous convictions and 38 court appearances, was just 14 when he attacked the woman while holding a knife to her throat.

His actions prompted a judge to ask: 'What on earth are we coming to in this world when a boy of 14 can not only acquire that record but then go on to do what you did that day?'

The clue is in the sentence, m'lud.

The judge said Webster, of Normanton, must serve at least five years before he is eligible for parole.

Another junkie rapist on the loose by the time he is twenty and the judge wonders what went wrong?

3 comments:

TheFatBigot said...

They're often called Jordan.

The reason the judge couldn't give him a proper sentence is that there are guidelines the judges have to follow, give too much and it is reduced on appeal. By the sound of things the sentence here was towards the top-end of what the guidelines allowed him to give.

It's pathetic, but it's not the judge's fault.

Stan said...

Fair enough, but who hears the appeals?

Anonymous said...

Check out his record - 63 previous convictions and 38 court appearances. ASBOs applied and breached.

The 'What on earth are we coming to...' should have been directed at every one of the judges and magistrates who let this little monster-in-the-making off on all the other occasions...

Incidentally, Googling the name of the judge gets you some...interesting...results regarding his history as one of the Yorkshire Ripper's lawyers.