Pingu the Penguin
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 29 Sep 2009
- Messages
- 7,964
What makes it even more mental - and I think I've got the gist of this right - is that despite him being a known football hooligan who attacked a footballer on the morning of a football match, it doesn't come under the scope of a "football related" offence. That's because to be considered as such, he would've had to have been travelling to or from a match he was attending or intending to attend. In other words, if he got caught throwing a punch at an opposition fan at or outside a football stadium that didn't even connect then he'd have got a far heavier sentence because it's deemed as being a "football related" offence even though in the eyes of pretty much everyone it's a lesser offence than what he did to Sterling.
I'm a magistrate. The sentence is about right in terms of what the sentencing guidelines say (e.g. not what the law "should" be, what it is). Starting point is a community order, bump up for aggravating features, take the mandatory 33% off for a guilty plea.
On the banning order, you've not got that quite right. These are ancillary orders and wouldn't have affected sentence in the way you think. I don't get why the CPS didn't appear to have applied for one though, nor why the Bench didn't impose one of its own volition.....but given his history he may already be subject to one I suppose, and so it wouldn't be needed.