Killer's sentence (From The Northern Echo)

Killer's sentence

9:52am Thursday 18th March 2010 in

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RE your story, “Husband furious after killer’s sentence cut” (Echo, March 12). First, my sympathy for pensioner James Sugden whose wife, Elizabeth, was knocked down and killed by unlicensed and uninsured motorcyclist Martin Tyson, who was jailed for three years by Teesside Crown Court after admitting causing death by careless driving.

Tyson, with 30 previous convictions for 71 offences, is clearly a lost cause and undeserving of sympathy or compassion.

To reduce his sentence to two years sends entirely the wrong message. He arrogantly used a motor vehicle with total disregard for society, causing a death, and ought to be serving a sentence of at least ten years.

If there is rehabilitation in our prison system, then the longer people are held, the greater the chance of success, and this repeat offender won’t be on our streets causing misery and devastation.

I’m not asking for a crusade, but the silent majority should be encouraged to be more vocal.

Our justice system is a joke. It is the wrongdoer who should be going about in fear and trepidation, not the honest citizen.

Gerard Wild, Richmond, North Yorkshire.