Georgina Scannell, presiding, said there was no choice but to jail Riley.
She added: “The offensive messages outraged the public. You had complete disregard for the tragic death of Ann Maguire.
“Besides this, countless other vile messages were made by you. The bench finds these were racially and religious aggravated.
“The offences are so serious that only a period of immediate custody can be justified.”
What is outrageous is the death of free speech in this country. That this man is a moron – like our very own troll, DD, AKA Rickie – is a given, but to prosecute someone – and, worse, to jail them – for words, because they are insensitive, outrageous or offensive is, itself the offensive outrage. That makes me angry – far more angry than some loser tweeting nasty remarks about dead schoolteachers, no matter how upsetting they may have been.
The piece you have linked to says he published the name of 15-year-old boy charged with Mrs Maguire’s murder.
There are reporting restrictions on naming those under age for certain offences http://www.jsbni.com/Publications/reporting-restrictions/Pages/default.aspx
I suspect that is what the jail time is for, the rest of his activity simply made it easier for the court to pass sentence on the moron.
It would appear that the charge was sending grossly offensive messages via a public communications network – not for revealing the accused’s name.
If what Voyager03 says is true, then some sections of our media have been highly negligent in their reporting of the matter. I heard about this on the radio news and was pretty appalled. If the guy is being sent down for contempt of court for revealing the boy’s name that is a somewhat different issue.
If it’s for revealing the boy’s name, will they be collaring those on the Corpus Christie Facebook page who did the same? Half of Twitter knew who he was with just a 2 minute FB search at any time during the next day.
Just as a curious aside, how is it that Jamie Bulger’s killers were named from the word go despite being, what, twelve? Would that not have happened if the same crime was committed today?
If he’d have beaten the crap out of someone while he was pissed up, his sentence would have been suspended. The law has become a joke.
If merely being offensive were sufficient to warrant doing porridge, 80% of MPs and all of the cabinet and the shadow cabinet would be doing life stretches…
I have passed despair, trundled through disbelief and am hurtling towards eternity with a heavy heart at this sort of nonsense.
I fail to understand why these idiots can’t see that if the modern technology was not available this man would just be making these comments to friends and family as when we all discussed news stories before the explosion of the internet and would never have been arrested let alone jailed.
The fact that so many of the Islamic race hate preachers get away with posting any vile stuff they like and never see the inside of a court room is typical judicial hypocrisy.
And whilst this man’s comments maybe distasteful too many they are not illegal, no one was forced to read what he wrote.
I can see why they don’t name the accused when they are under age any more, it’s not so much about the accused as the families and friends of that boy and the repercussions and reprisals against his family, but again due to the availability of information about every ones lives on the internet trying to keep these things private is pointless.
Who ever says Orwell’s visions of the future were wrong need to really look at the world.
“Who ever says Orwell’s visions of the future were wrong need to really look at the world.”
Unfortunately, Kath, all three of our mainstream parties have viewed “1984” as a training manual…
I’ve come across his name and photo on the internet without actually looking for them, and I believe they’ve been front page of the nationals.
Call me an old cynic, but I suspect had he been a multi generational dyed in the wool Yorkshireman named Obadiah Bickerdyke, they wouldn’t have been so keen to keep it quiet.