h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Lee Hughes returns to football with Oldham.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/o/oldham_athletic/6967063.stm

I have a great deal of difficulty with this. The driver of the car that Hughes left for dead is till struggling for compensation with Hughes insurance company.

The man himself ran away after the accident and hid for 2 days - allegedly to allow the drugs to get out of his system.

He was sentenced to 6 years - he's served less that 4. His attitude in court was superior and unapologetic.

However to qualify for full remission it is necessary to show remourse for one's crime.

I don't believe he should be back on a football field.

What does the rest of the VSC think - I am being unrealistic ?

>>I have a great deal of difficulty with this.

I'm not wildly pleased either.


>>The driver of the car that Hughes left for dead is till struggling for compensation with Hughes insurance company.

To be fair, a dispute between Hughes' insurance company and the family isn't something that he'll have any say in. So it's not really fair to use this as a stick to beat him.


>>The man himself ran away after the accident and hid for 2 days - allegedly to allow the drugs to get out of his system.

However the use of this stick is perfectly justified and valid. A had assumed that it was just booze, I didn't realise that there were rumours of drugs.


>>He was sentenced to 6 years - he's served less that 4. His attitude in court was superior and unapologetic.

His attitude towards his offence is a factor that can be taken into consideration at sentencing, and reading the Judge's remarks from the trial he did himself no favours when it came to sentencing. At the time of his conviction the most serious charge he could face was Causing Death by Dangerous Driving, and this is what he was charged with and convicted of.

Deciding the sentence depends upon the degree of culpability of the defendent with a range of aggravating and mitigating factors to scale the sentence up or down. At the time of his conviction the absolute maximum sentence for the offence was 10 years, with most sentences coming in at under 2. Therefore for him to get 6 years means that they pretty much threw the book (as large as the book was at the time) at him.


>>However to qualify for full remission it is necessary to show remourse for one's crime.

As to him serving less than 4. Well we've had remission for good behaviour and what have you for donkeys years. Without knowing the circumstances of his behaviour behind bars - which you and I both don't - it is impossible for us to say whether he should get any remission or not. What is apparent is that he's qualified for it under what ever criteria his jailers have applied to his circumstances. Therefore he shouldn't get beaten with this stick.

Having a whack at a system that allows x% of time off from a sentence based upon a range of criteria is a whole 'nother target, and you can beat away at that.


>>I don't believe he should be back on a football field.

Football is his skill, it's his job. Just because someone has been in prison for an offense does not necessarily preclude them from returning to their old profession on release. Imagine for example if he was a plumber. Would having been in chokey for killing someone preclude him from fixing your leaky taps? No, of course it wouldn't. And I don't see that football is in any significant way different.

However all that said. Will I and any non-Oldham football fan forgive him on the field of play. Of course we won't. I've chanted "Lee Hughes is a murderer" before, and if he ever lines up against the Blades, I'm sure I'll chant it again.

Being in the entertainment industry is not quite the same as being a plumber, footballers - wrongly or wrongly - are seen as role models by kids.

Thee is more than a suggestion of drugs the barman at the pub gave evidence, but it was not allowed, because he didn't actually see him take them.

lets face it he's not the only sportsman who's been to jail. What he did was reckless and cowardly. lots of people have to suffer that after shock. If he does have a conscious he has to live with what he did, and im sure the fans on the terraces aren't going to let him forget.

The role model argument is valid. But to that I would say he's gone from being an integral member of a team that had just won promotion to the Premiership to... well, Oldham. A salutory lesson if ever there was one.