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The Magistrate's Blog (2005-2012)

This blog has migrated to www.magistratesblog.blogspot.co.uk This blog is anonymous, and Bystander's views are his and his alone. Where his views differ from the letter of the law, he will enforce the letter of the law because that is what he has sworn to do. If you think that you can identify a particular case from one of the posts you are wrong. Enough facts are changed to preserve the truth of the tale but to disguise its exact source.

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Location: Near London, United Kingdom

The blog is written by a retired JP, with over 30 years' experience on the Bench.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Don't Overdo It

This case is one that I make no apology for lifting from the Daily Mail because it is the Mail's analysis that will remain embedded in the public consciousness, following journalism's Gresham's Law that bad reporting drives out good. On the face of it, it must be wrong for a victim to have to compensate the man who stole from him, but this was one of those cases, like the one a year or so ago where a householder pursued a burglar down the street and battered him into brain damage in which the reaction to being a victim was disproportionate and excessive. English law is perfectly capable of dealing with legitimate self defence, and even makes allowances for the heat of the moment, but the reaction has to be in proportion to the crime.
I feel sorry for the man who was robbed, (I am reminded that he wasn't robbed in the legal sense, rather cheated) but he has to understand that he just went too far, and that has cost him a lot of money. It sticks in one's craw to see a low-life thief rewarded, but it doesn't take much to turn a criminal into a victim.
Mind how you go, now.

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