Lucy Connelly was sentenced yesterday to a term of 31 months imprisonment, after she pleaded guilty to the offence of publishing material with the intention of stirring up racial hatred. I include a link below to the sentencing remarks.
The first sentence of paragraph 4 contains a political statement, i.e. that it is
"a strength of our society that it is both diverse and inclusive". Whilst I am not suggesting that the judge failed to apply the law, the judiciary are supposed to be apolitical, under the 'separation of powers' doctrine. I have drawn attention to another similar statement made by a judge in the sentencing remarks of R v Viscount St Davids. In my recent article on the allegations of 'two-tier justice', I argued that this attitude was interwoven within the fabric of the state and the legal profession.
The remainder of paragraph 4 is disjunctive. It refers to violence and inciting racial hatred within the same sentence, implying that they are conceptually the same when they are in fact, conceptually distinct.
Lucy Connelly was not charged with inciting violence. I would have thought that her use of the words 'for all I care', would have prevented this.
I have analysed on this blog, whether it is justified to make inciting racial hatred a criminal offence and concluded that it is not (essentially because it is too subjective and political and even if such speech may be considered immoral, it should not be made the subject of criminal law); see below:
Irrespective of how the sentencing guidelines were applied in this case, it is inevitable that comparisons will be made between this sentence and sentences for violent and sexual offences. The result of such comparisons will be further allegations of two-tier justice.
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