HUH????
Posted on 05/04/2005 10:42:29 AM PDT by David Hunter
Teacher Linda Walker, who was jailed for firing a pellet gun during a row with youths, has been freed by the Court of Appeal.
Three judges gave her a conditional discharge but refused her permission to challenge her convictions.
The 48-year-old, from Urmston, Greater Manchester, was jailed for six months after she was convicted of affray and possessing a firearm on 29 March.
She said she fired the gun after the youths had terrorised her family.
Her trial was told she had received nuisance phone calls abusing her family, her garden shed had been broken into, and a car and her garden had been vandalised.
But no evidence was produced that any of the youths she confronted were involved in the vandalism.
Walker had sought to use fresh evidence from a milkman, David Matthews, that one of the youths had been seen on her property in Hollyhouse Drive.
But the judges said the evidence did not relate to what happened on the day she confronted the youths.
She now faces uncertainty over her job as a special needs teacher.
A spokesman for Salford City Council said: "Linda Walker was suspended from her teaching post pending this police investigation and court action.
Decision welcomed
"Now legal proceedings are ended, this formal disciplinary action can also be concluded. This will be completed as quickly as possible."
Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust welcomed the court's decision to free Walker.
He said: "What she did was wrong, but so was the sentence.
"If the criminal justice system continues to fail to protect the public and victims of crime, I predict that more and more people will look to taking the law into their own hands and that is anarchy."
He added: "I urge police chiefs to ensure that more officers are put on the beat and that effective action is taken against offenders when victims report crime."
A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Police said the decision was a "matter for the judiciary".
HUH????
Ping!
Let's face it, the battle for Britain is lost.
The sane should flee the country, before that is outlawed.
Does row, (pronounced rou), not also mean an angry quarrel in the USA?
There's nothing wrong with Britian that couldn't fixed with several hundred feet of rope and all the lamp posts in London.
Its considered archaic here and not commonly used. I hear it pretty frequently on the Beeb.
I'm still trying to figure out where the Y is in China and the CH is in Tuesday.
You've got to be pulling my charging handle.
Hey, she was convicted of affray! She should have gotten life!!
What the heck is affray?
NO....they should pay attention to how their relatives, who fled from there, over 200 years ago dealt with injustice from one of their own kings; George was his first name I believe.
Only here it's the folks trying to protect whats theirs who are the offenders and the suspects who are the victims. There is no indication here things would have been any different if she had better evidence against the punks she confronted. Additional officers wouldn't matter a whit. Craziness. You be careful.
I have two operating principles in life...
1) Very few problems can't be solved with a pellet gun.
Examples: neighbor's dog barking at night? Giving a presentation and one of the audience continously asks stupid questions?
2) Those problems that can't be solved with a pellet gun are very likely to be solved with duct-tape.
Examples: neighbor's kids making too much noise? Wife complains too much?
Yes, it does and I knew by the context that it meant she got into an argument. I just couldn't pass up the chance to toss in some sarcasm.
I quite agree. Unfortunately, when the British government included air rifles with power ratings over 12 ftlbs and air pistols over 6 ftlbs in the Firearms Act 1968 in order to license their owners, they created a logical argument for the Courts and Police to use to insist that lower powered airguns were also firearms. We are now left with a situation where, in the eyes of UK law, even a child's plastic airsoft pistol is a "firearm".
Methinks OXEN was just being funny.
Well, there are some here that think a water-pistol is a firearm.
(shaking head and rolling eyes)
I knew you were just goofing. Tho sum around here have no cents of humor. Most of us due, sin's that is Y we hav sow much funn.
Yes, I thought OX was just being amusing, but not having an American's understanding of contemporary American English usage in the USA then I couldn't be sure.
Pretty ironic that the Brits have done to their own country what Hitler couldn't do.
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