Comment: Grieving family denied justice

Dec 5 2007 Liverpool Daily Post

TODAY, Joseph Dutton woke up to his first full day in prison and stared at the cell bars which will frame his morning view for the next year or so.

During his detention, he will be well fed, kept warm, offered some light work, and entertained with books, games and television.

If he wishes, he can study for new qualifications while he waits to rejoin the world outside.

Not a bad result for someone who took another person’s life on a whim.

Not a sentence designed to deter anyone else who decides to smash his fist into a complete stranger’s face in an act of “unprovoked street violence”.

And not a fitting punishment for a man who, without reason or thought, left a mother and two children without the loving support of a partner and father.

The decision to jail Dutton for two years for the manslaughter of Alan Thompson is a disgrace and a sickening slap in the face for Mr Thompson’s family.

Dutton’s defence team argued he did not intend to kill Mr Thompson.

And their point is?

This thug leaped from a car to accost an innocent man, hitting him with a “full-blooded right hook” simply because he felt like it.

This was not a street brawl or a gang feud. It was a random act of shocking, uncaring brutality which Dutton should spend the next decade paying for through the loss of his liberty.

It is hard to imagine what Mr Thomp- son’s family must have felt in the public gallery as they watched this farce play out before them.

Sentencing Dutton, Judge Henry Globe, QC, the Recorder of Liverpool, said Dutton had displayed genuine remorse. Is feeling sorry a mitigating circumstance?

Perhaps we should ask Mr Thompson’s family – said by the judge to be still grieving at the “unnecessary, illogical and unlawful manner of his death”.

No doubt they consider this sentence unnecessary and illogical as well.