Sour Cherie Pie

A recent sentence passed by Ms Cherie Booth, has been well and truly increased by the Court of Appeal, reports The Daily Mail, falling gleefully on the chance to savage one of its main bêtes noires.

I have no comment on the sentence itself, nor on Ms Booth, whom I have never sat with (although colleagues have).

My conclusion from this is that the Court of Appeal has shown yet again that the criminal justice system incorporates a number of self-correcting mechanisms, which in this case have served to rectify an unduly lenient sentence. If that Court, and those same mechanisms, serve to reduce a few of the recent riot sentences as being unduly harsh, I hope that those who start to wail about the cases will remember that appeals work both ways.

I hope that, but I am not sure that I expect it.