Normally, I agree wholeheartedly with Leg Iron. However, I can’t agree with this one.
Now we have a smoker who defended himself against a shrill harpy, and who then helped her to safety, jailed for four years. If he had left her there until the next train cut her into sushi he would have had a lesser sentence. As long as he wasn’t smoking while it happened. Lucky for him the EU vanishing act has not yet come into force.
The general thrust of the piece; the tactics used by the Righteous being the same as those of the Inquisition is sound and well observed and I agree with the point being made. However, the use of this incident mars the argument.
A carpenter pushed a woman off a station platform and on to a rail track after a row about him smoking, a court has heard.
Ionel Rapisca, 33, is accused of pushing Linda Buchanan, 59, at Kent’s Farningham Road station in August 2008.
The management consultant landed near a live line carrying 750 volts, Maidstone Crown Court was told.
Mr Rapisca, of Joyce Green Lane, Dartford, denies grievous bodily harm with intent.
It doesn’t matter whether he intended to cause injury or not, it doesn’t matter what the argument was about – he caused actual bodily harm to Buchanan and but for a few inches narrowly avoided causing her death – and that he subsequently helped her back onto the platform is neither here nor there, either; she could have been killed by the live rail or cut to pieces by an oncoming train and that ain’t pretty. I’ve picked up a few dead bodies from the line in my time, so can confirm this one from personal experience. Not meaning to cause harm simply isn’t a defence here. He did push her, this is undeniable fact. Had she died, he would have been facing – correctly – manslaughter charges. That he is a smoker and she an anti-smoking nag makes no difference to the facts of the case.
For those not accustomed to the electrification system on our railways, the third rail system is extremely dangerous and falling on it causes that 750 volts (and several thousand amperes) to earth through your body. Those of us who have cause to walk about this stuff do so with understandable caution. DC systems, should they earth through your body, cause it to cling to the power source making death pretty much certain – and if you don’t die, you will probably spend the rest of your life wishing that you had.
English law is and always has been clear; we owe a duty of care to our neighbours not to cause them harm. This applies to civil and criminal law. Should Buchanan wish to sue under tort law, she would have a cast iron case now that the criminal law has taken its course.
Mr Rapisca pushed Linda Buchanan and she subsequently fell onto the railway lines. He is at the very least guilty of a tort and having caused actual bodily harm, guilty of a criminal offence. He is lucky he wasn’t facing manslaughter charges. Whether he meant to is irrelevant – he broke the law.
Leg Iron’s assertion that Buchanan was a nagging harpy may well be so and such people are an annoyance. However, being an annoying harpy ain’t justification for pushing them onto the railway lines. Rapisca wasn’t gaoled because he was a smoker, he was gaoled because he caused actual bodily harm. There’s nothing new in this and it has nothing to do with smoking. So, as an illustration to make Leg Iron’s otherwise excellent case, this one falls short.
I see your point, but would argue that smoking and indeed the current witch-hunt on smokers is an important part of the case.
The woman felt justified in approaching Rapisca – not once, but twice on consecutive days – and verbally abusing him for doing something that, had she simply stayed clear of him, would not have affected her at all. She felt justified in doing this because of the constant barrage of ‘smokers are subhuman’ propaganda. She instigated the trouble, twice, and she should not be held blameless.
He should not have pushed her onto the tracks, but it’s still not clear that he intended that to happen. Intent makes the difference between deliberately trying to hurt someone and accidentally hurting them. Manslaughter would still be the charge if she had died, but not murder.
My argument remains that if she had not persistently harassed him he would not have pushed her at all, and if it hadn’t been for the likes of ASH demonising all smokers every single day without cease, she would not have gained the impression that it was perfectly okay to harass anyone who was smoking within her sight.
Pushing someone onto railway tracks is going too far. But this, and more, is going to happen because when you push people and keep pushing and pushing every single moment of every day without a moment’s let-up just because they do something you don’t like then once in a while, one of them will snap. I don’t think he meant to push her off the platform, but he did and as you say, he’d be facing a more serious charge (which would probably get a lesser sentence) if she had died.
However, the day is coming when a smoker somewhere is going to go postal. ASH will claim it as proof that smokers are evil, but all it will prove is that ASH and their like have driven people insane with their constant harassment.
.-= My last blog ..Justice? =-.
There were other ways in which he could have responded. Given that when people do confront smokers or people using mobile phones on the quiet carriage, most people tend to look elsewhere rather than be involved, ridicule would have been a fine weapon to use. Physical violence and the subsequent prosecution merely plays into their hands.
I don’t think a murder charge would have held up at any point as the prosecution would have needed to demonstrate intent to kill. There is no evidence of such intent.
Ultimately, though, giving them ammunition is self-defeating and Rapisca has handed them an arsenal.
Well said.
This same story came up yesterday over here and I suggested a better way he could have responded in the comments there, so I won’t repeat it.
Thanks for flagging mine up, Ciaran. 😉
I wrote that before I saw the CCTV. A completely empty platform, Rapisca walking away from her, and Buchanan fairly sprinting up to remonstrate at the narrowest part of the station.
I thought she didn’t like the ‘smell of cancer’, so why was she not keeping well away? As Leg Iron says, it’s ASH who should be in the dock for this, which was the general thrust of my piece.
And if Buchanan was a libertarian, she would have weighed up the situation rationally and realised there really wasn’t any problem to wag her finger about in the first place. 😉
I see your point too, Longrider, but feel Rapisca has been harshly treated with a sentence which seemingly fails to take full note of intent, provocation and subsequent actions.
.-= My last blog ..Tories: Remove The Plank From Your Eyes =-.
If Buchanan was a libertarian, she wouldn’t have needed to weigh anything up to wag her finger about…
I think we can all learn something from this. Smokers; not to throw people onto railway lines, anti-smokers; not to poke a dog so much that he feels obliged to bite.
.-= My last blog ..Chippy foreign bird =-.
WHile I kinda agree with the gist of your post, consider the sentence he got compared to what your average feral youth gets for stabbing someone. Now does it become apparent that he’s being punished for being a smoker, not for causing ABH? And post traumatic stress disorder, do me a fucking favour.
I was very careful not to mention sentencing as each individual case when compared to another can give bizarre results.
The only conclusion we can draw from this is that he was punished for pushing Buchanan onto the railway lines. We can draw no other conclusion. The jury and the judge made their decisions based upon the evidence before them. Provoked or not, his response was disproportionate – he could so easily have caused her death. Over what? An annoying nag? On balance this is not a good case to make for the smoking/liberty lobby.
Indeed.