"I can't help it if a cyclist falls over"

[glenn forger]

Cos it's a verdict, only if there was evidence of tampering or something else improper. IANAL.

 

[lukesdad]

It would be helpful to know what direction the judge gave the jury at the trial.

 

[Custom24]

To my imagination, the jury found not guilty because there were one or more reasonable doubts left in their minds about whether the defendant caused death by dangerous or careless driving. I'm not sure if there need to be some salient facts that were not reported in order to explain this.

Juries are not representative. Look at this one - 10 females and 2 males. When I served on a jury, there was a painful lack of employed males in the room. Men tend to get out of jury service by getting letters from their employer, or finding other reasons not to serve. Despite the letter that you get saying it's not possible to opt out, in practice it is. Employers are under no obligation to pay you during your jury service and many don't, so many people worm their way out of it. The loss of earnings you can claim is minimal.

Now, don't shoot me, because this is not my opinion, but the reasonable doubts that would have been in their non-representative minds might have played out a scenario where this happened;

"The car had left enough* room, but when the lead cyclist braked/slowed down, the deceased leaned forwards to ask what he was doing, slipped a foot off the pedal, causing a loss of control (she was a novice), the bicycle turned at right angles into the road and into the path of the car, with not enough time left at that stage for the defendant to react"

Of course "enough" falls back to the subjective standard of a careful and competent driver. Remember above how I said the juries were not representative...

If you want things to change, do your jury service.

Edited - last sentence was missing "want"

 

[400bhp]

Sounds about right Custom24.

 

[theclaud]

"The car had left enough* room, but when the lead cyclist braked/slowed down, the deceased leaned forwards to ask what he was doing, slipped a foot off the pedal, causing a loss of control (she was a novice), the bicycle turned at right angles into the road and into the path of the car, with not enough time left at that stage for the defendant to react"

That would be the car that was on the wrong side of the road, in the act of performing an unsafe overtaking manoeuvre, then?

 

[glenn forger]

The bicycle and young woman were unlucky enough to be in "My line of travel" in Dr Measures' own, chilling words.

 

[jarlrmai]

This really is a disgrace.

 

[Buddfox]

Shouldn't the court transcript be a matter of public record? Is there any way to get hold of a copy - even if that meant going in person to the Court? Like others I remain utterly perplexed at this verdict. I can only rationalise it by thinking that there was an additional piece of evidence that has not been reported - but if it was so important, surely it must have been? It would be interesting to read the whole thing if it was made available in any way.

 

[glenn forger]

Search Again
Crown Court ArchiveResults: 10
DATE LOCATION COURT CASE N0. DEFENDANT/S

02-10-2013Oxford Crown Court2T20120416Helen Rachel Measures

I think you have to write to the court to get the transcript.

 

[glenn forger]

This chap pleaded guilty:

Adam Garthwaite jailed for St Giles-in-the-Heath crash which killed Paul Garcia


"Before this accident, while driving through St Giles-in-the-Heath, you overtook at speed near a bend and in the face of oncoming traffic.

“Some three miles further along the road you crossed into the oncoming carriageway and caused a head on collision. There was no obvious reason why you drove onto the wrong side of the road.

“This was a case of inattention. The positioning of your car on the wrong side of the road may not have been deliberate but it created a very obvious danger and had fatal consequences.

“There is no explanation other than you were not concentrating on driving and allowed you car to become a serious danger to others. You had driven dangerously in St Giles-in-the-Heath, but that was some miles away.

“I consider this case comes into a category of falling not far short of dangerous driving.”



Read more: http://www.thisisnorthdevon.co.uk/A...tory-18450499-detail/story.html#ixzz2hJJsCYnw
Follow us: @ThisisNDevon on Twitter | thisisnorthdevon on Facebook

Plead not guilty, hire a doberman lawyer who doesn't mind about grossly offensive and sexist remarks and get off scot free.

 

[Custom24]

Hmmm, I think a firing squad might be justified for that.

For getting out of jury service? A bit harsh, but I agree in principle.

 

[Origamist]

To my imagination, the jury found not guilty because there were one or more reasonable doubts left in their minds about whether the defendant caused death by dangerous or careless driving. I'm not sure if there need to be some salient facts that were not reported in order to explain this.

Juries are not representative. Look at this one - 10 females and 2 males. When I served on a jury, there was a painful lack of employed males in the room. Men tend to get out of jury service by getting letters from their employer, or finding other reasons not to serve. Despite the letter that you get saying it's not possible to opt out, in practice it is. Employers are under no obligation to pay you during your jury service and many don't, so many people worm their way out of it. The loss of earnings you can claim is minimal.

Now, don't shoot me, because this is not my opinion, but the reasonable doubts that would have been in their non-representative minds might have played out a scenario where this happened;

"The car had left enough* room, but when the lead cyclist braked/slowed down, the deceased leaned forwards to ask what he was doing, slipped a foot off the pedal, causing a loss of control (she was a novice), the bicycle turned at right angles into the road and into the path of the car, with not enough time left at that stage for the defendant to react"

Of course "enough" falls back to the subjective standard of a careful and competent driver. Remember above how I said the juries were not representative...

If you want things to change, do your jury service.

Edited - last sentence was missing "want"

Your imagined jury room deliberations are missing a few known, key facts, but perhaps the jury forget them too...

As regards the diversity and composition of juries, I am afraid you are wildly extrapolating.

The employed are over-represented among serving jurors, and the retired and unemployed are in fact under-represented. What's more, jury pools at individual courts closely reflect the local population in terms of gender and age, and the self-employed are represented among serving jurors in direct proportion to their representation in the population. This may conflict with your personal experience, but don't take my word for it, check with the Ministry of Justice...

 

[Custom24]

You appear to be correct about the jury representativeness. I stand corrected. Thank you.

http://4wardeveruk.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/p.Diversity-Fairness-in-the-Jury-System.pdf

I only served once, and out of perhaps 60 jurors in the room, there were probably only 10 men, and of those half were retired. I was a few years ago, mind you.

 

[mr_cellophane]

Just looked up the B480 in street view. Shame she wasn't there the same day as the camera car

http://goo.gl/maps/BMHo6

 

[tommyp669]

A wealthy woman employs an extremely expensive lawyer (check his self-congratulatory website) and gets away scot free with killing a young woman by deciding to drive at her on the wrong side of the road. The woman, in her defence, blames the girl's boy friend, apparently just for being there. If I were Mr Pontin I have no idea whether I'd be so affected as to buy a car and drive it into Mr Fielding's family.

If you read the articles carefully you will see that the woman was legally aided, so paying an expensive lawyer is not the case. All Mr Fielding did was put her defence across to a jury, which any of us would be entitled to.

The bigger question is why the CPS failed to secure a conviction on what seems to be a straight forward case from comments made. The answer unfortunately is in-house advocates. Cheap and cheerful prosecutors that cost the government as little as possible and this can be the result.