Foreign visitors to this blog who inhabit far flung places like Australia, Ireland, Canada, Tristan da Cunha, Sweden, Germany and Trumplandia (formerly the USA) may be interested to learn what has happened to the two ignorant oiks who in 2023 cut down that iconic sycamore tree near Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland. They were sentenced today - several weeks after they were found guilty of a crime that pricked the conscience of the British nation.
Daniel Graham (39) and Adam Carruthers (32) were both sentenced to four years and three months in jail. The judge - Mrs Justice Lambert - found them "equally culpable".
This was my original blogpost from back in October 2023 - just after I had heard the news about the cruel felling of the famous sycamore. And here I was in May of this year writing about the trial.
It seems to me that justice has been done in this case. Even though Graham and Carruthers may not serve all their allotted time behind bars, a significant chunk of their freedom has now been taken away. I doubt that they have the wherewithal to ponder upon their offensive crime with true regret - such is their ignorance.
Natural beauty is something to cherish and respect be it a mountain top, a rainbow, a swathe of heather on a moorside, a frog leaping into a pond, swallows winging in the summer air or a lone sycamore tree standing proud in the rolling Northumberland landscape.
Of course there are far worse people than Graham and Carruthers. They didn't kill anybody. They didn't fly an aeroplane into a skyscraper. They didn't detonate a rucksack bomb on a tube train. They didn't abuse a child or rob a bank. But they offended the society of which they are meant to be a part, finding inexplicable pleasure in destroying something that was so beautiful and defenceless and loved by thousands of their fellow citizens.
What they did was wrong and made many people sad so I'm glad they got some time to ponder their wrongdoing. You're probably right though, they're not smart enough to have any self awareness.
ReplyDeleteThe length of sentence seems right to me.
DeleteIt was deliberate destructive vandalism of an historical site. I would have given them a stiffer sentence for it.
ReplyDeleteWould you have given them the death penalty Debra?
Deletewhat they did was wrong but governments and developers fell thousands of important trees every day with no redress.
ReplyDeleteOnce again the small time criminal is scapegoated so the real bad guys can fly under the radar
I am sure there have been many cases where developers have destroyed trees in less iconic places and pretty much got away with it.
DeleteI've commented at excessive length already but I also agree with Kylie.
DeleteTotally agree with Kylie's comment
ReplyDeleteI have sympathy with it too.
DeleteI would argue that they killed a tree and who is to say that they are not sentient? They communicate with each other and help each other, which is more than some people do.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how else these two dimwits might have acquired fame - certainly not through the writing of poetry or running marathons for worthy charities.
Deletebut they got what they wanted - notoriety.
ReplyDeleteThen can chew on that in prison.
DeleteSaw the news and immediately expected a post from you.
ReplyDeleteEven allowing for the likelihood that only half of the sentence will be served "inside,"* those sentences are too long by a factor of at least two. This is based on my reading of the sentencing guidelines at the time of my comment on your last post on this topic.
I feel there is a continuing classist aspect to the swingeing sentences visited on social order and outrage offences in the UK. I also thought the fellow who sabotaged the boat race a few years ago got an unduly severe punishment (in that case not classist against the offender, who was actually a bit of a trustafarian, but classist in protection of the event).
Incarcerating people is expensive and also destructive because it damages people with whom society will still have to deal on their release.
*Probation after release is also punitive.
Yesterday's reporting indicated that the two ruffians could have been given sentences of up to ten years.
DeleteThat's just the maximum sentence for the offence. It would be for the most serious case. I dunno, blowing up the Tower of London? (provided no human casualties). Destroying the Wilton Diptych? (Arbitrary example but a personal favourite.)
DeleteMy view was based on the sentencing guidelines, but it has to an extent been overtaken by the offenders' counsel conceding that it was in the "most serious" category - which meant 1.5-4 years. I don't think they should have made that concession but they are closer to the coalface and I suppose they had their reasons. Maybe it's just because the property damage was more than £5,000.
You can read the sentencing comments by the judge here.
Despite her Honour's disclaimer at [34] of her judgment, there is a lot of double counting in her sentencing. By "double counting" I mean that the offenders have been punished twice for the same thing (which is a big no-no, at least in Australia and I am pretty sure also in England and Wales). It also seems to have been set up: why is Dame Christina (High Court judge) sitting in the Crown Court?
As for considering it an aggravating factor that they rejoiced that some lad was also being accused of the offence (see [36] of the sentencing remarks) that is just ridiculous. Of course, if somebody has done something to which they are not owning up, it will be a source of cheer that others are (wrongly) being accused of the same offence.
I would be surprised if there were not an appeal on sentence. But people being people (especially politic people who are appointed to the bench) if made it may well not alter the sentence.
Look, it was a senseless crime. The suggestion from Dame Christina's judgment is that it was a "dark and stormy night" [thankyou Bulwer-Lytton] act of bravado. With the poet, I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree, though a poem is surely the the flimsiest comparator. The offenders are shits.
I am shocked that you should embrace such a red-top notion of punishment.
Feel free to not approve this comment.
I do not read red top newspapers so I have no idea what they might or might not have said about the sentencing. Frankly, I am shocked that you have climbed up on a high horse to suavely berate me as if your superior knowledge of the law somehow makes your view of this case more valid than mine and most other fair-minded citizens. As you say these fellows are shits and they very much got what they deserved. I don't really give a toss about sentencing guidelines and stuff like that.
DeleteAnd, luckily, from now on when you Google their names, their idiocy will come back to haunt them.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure that either of them can read.
DeleteTrumplandia? YP, that really hurt. Most of the sane among us hate his guts.
ReplyDeleteSorry that my little joke fell on stony ground Carolyn.
DeleteTheir sentence featured on last night's main TV news, Neil! As soon as a picture of the iconic tree appeared behind the newsreader, I knew what it was about - thanks to having read about it on your blog, first in 2023 and then again in May.
ReplyDeleteLike you say, they have not killed or abused a person or committed any of the other crimes you listed, but destroying something beautiful and defenceless just because they can shows a mindset that, given the opportunity, might not stop at cutting down a tree.
A rap on the knuckles would not have been sufficient to respond to their wrongdoing.
DeleteBuilding new roads in the middle of the countryside creates roadkill every day. I could think of such a recent road build construction. Have you seen the recent photos of the felled tree? It's sprouting branches and leaves again.
ReplyDeleteGood people have grown saplings from sycamore keys taken from the felled tree.
DeleteI still think part of their sentence should have been to plant new trees somewhere.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a great idea to me - a month of unpaid hard labour with The Forestry Commission.
DeleteThey were unrepentant could not see the folly of what they had done, that was the thing that was so sad. I agree with Marcellous, the sentence was too long. I know they should be punished but education could help as well. And as always Nature goes on growing as the Sycamore tree shows.
ReplyDeleteAre you soft on crime Thelma? Chop their right hands off - there'd be no more tree felling then. (I don't mean it)
DeleteTheir sentence was mentioned on some newscast here yesterday too . What I'm still wondering is if they ever explained WHY they did it?? ... I visited Hadrian's wall at Housesteads Roman Fort on our first family road trip in Britain back in 1971. In my photo album is a colour postcard of the wall that includes that famous tree - but my own two b&w photos from the wall do not, so I'm not sure if I also saw the tree "live". More likely perhaps that I just bought the card at Housesteads. (Google tells me that the tree grew some 2 miles away from there.)
ReplyDeleteI also visited Housesteads and like you I somehow missed the iconic tree.
DeleteIt was so unnecessary. They did it because they could. I think River's solution for a sentence sounds reasonable and fitting.
ReplyDeleteWhat is an appropriate sentence, as long as it takes for the tree to grow back, while they rot in a cage watching it grow.
ReplyDeleteI agree with River that they should have to pay for the planting of many, many trees to make up for what they did...
ReplyDeleteThe infuriating thing is, they could never explain themselves. Any questions we all have about their motive will go unanswered, because they basically HAD no motive. They stole something precious from the entire nation. Oiks is right.
ReplyDelete