The jury accepted Harvey's lawyer's claim that he was in such a state at the class's behaviour that he could not have intended to harm the boy. Harvey admitted grievous bodily harm without intent. He thought he had killed the boy.
I accept that it seems likely that the victim was an annoying little twat and the teacher was provoked but to acquit him of attempted murder seems perverse.
If the the judge and jury had decided that he was not in a fit mental state to be responsible for his actions then why did he plead guilty to GBH?
13 comments:
This is either a clear case of jury nullification, or the CPS screwed up (surely not!) in going for the higher charge when they already had a guilty plea to the lesser...
He should have got an Absolute Discharge . Or , better still , charges should not have been brought .
A couple of incidents like this and our educational system would begin to function again . And your Granny could walk home from the bingo at night .
Do you really think that the kiddie would still be alive had the grown man actually wanted to murder it?
At best he tapped him with the weight, even a good thwack with this would've crushed the skull like a melon.
Think alpha lion grabbing an unruly cub by the scruff and shaking the bejeesus out of it to put it in it's place.
Perhaps today's offspring simply have thicker skulls? God knows, it's hard enough to pound any sense into them...
He was giving a German lesson. Far from shouting that he wanted to kill the child, he was saying "the, the, the" in German. Sometimes you need to really hammer definite articles into kids.
I was wondering about that too.
why did he stop at one?
I go with what Anon says at 3.12.
@ Paddy, the German word "die" is pronounced "dee". Or perhaps this happened in a Geordie school, where the English word "die" is also pronounced "dee"?
Is it true that the words were heard only by the pupils gathered round the door? Reports said the teacher and boy have little or no recollection of events and other staff arrived later.
Give the confusion at the time and the opportunity to compare stories later - and the fact that these witnesses were themselves involved in the provocation that led to the attack - how certain is it that they reported exactly what they heard at the time?
Just try showing a class a simple sequence of events then testing them at the end of the lesson and see how many different versions you get!
I didn't say his pronunciation was any good, Mark. Sorry, guess that was a joke that works better in print than aurally
Julia- The CPS are in a tricky position, he's obviously guilty but juries are likely to be highly sympathetic to him.
YA- More incidents like this and there will be a lot of drooling vegetables.
Paddy/Mark- In fairness I've only seen the "die, die, die" stuff in the written reports so he could be speaking german.
Did the film ever make it to Youtube?
Banned- Not that I know of.
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