Men who cut down iconic Sycamore Gap tree sentenced to 4 years and 3 months in jail
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/clymgm1v43vt?app-referrer=push-notification
Posted by topotaul
Men who cut down iconic Sycamore Gap tree sentenced to 4 years and 3 months in jail
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/clymgm1v43vt?app-referrer=push-notification
Posted by topotaul
30 Comments
I still have no idea why they did it, most crimes at least have some sort of motivation or reasoning however flawed or corrupt, this was just utterly pointless.
Surprised their was no fines after the judge listed the damage costs in excess of £50,000
Of which they’ll serve 40%, which is 1 year 8 months. One of them has been on remand since before Christmas, so he’ll serve about a year from now.
A not-at-all outlandish sentence given the [guidelines for criminal damage](https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/magistrates-court/item/criminal-damage-other-than-by-fire-value-exceeding-5000-racially-or-religiously-aggravated-criminal-damage/), their near-complete lack of mitigating factors and litany of aggravating factors – but I’m sure plenty of highly opinionated and legally uneducated redditors will swiftly start comparing it in bad faith to completely unrelated cases.
Don’t see how jail solves this or many other crimes. Putd a huge burden on the tax payer for no benefit.
I would much rather each of them is given 2,000 hours of community service.
Cue eight million outraged ‘Four years? You get less for [thing]’ comments/news articles/tweets/documentaries/autobiographies
2 years per braincell
Better than nothing I guess
It’s about the right sentence for me – they’ll be out in 2 years at most, and stand a reasonable chance of being on tag after just over a year. I think for, fundmanetally cutting down a tree, that’s a harsh enough punishment for the crime.
What’s shocking, really, is that this sentence is so much worse than for many other arguably much worse crimes.
Interestingly, so far, the roughly even split between people unhappy that this sentence is too long or too short.
For me, I think it’s spot on. The fact that the justice system is too soft on some violent offenders is its own issue to be fixed and irrelevant here.
Cool, can we do the couple that chopped down the protected tree in Shropshire next? (A twinned yew iirc but Google isn’t giving me much to work with) They never got into any trouble for it.
I heard there were tree fellars. How come only 2 of them were sentenced?
About time. Four years sounds harsh for a tree, but man… that tree was iconic. Good riddance.
These are adults. If it was teenagers you could kind of understand it, we were all young once. But this pair of twats are grown adults. I dread to think what else they do to be irritating to others in their daily lives, because “funny”.
I’m all for the prison sentence but they really should have added a significant community order to the end of it. Planting a few thousand trees to start to make up for it, for example. At the end of all this, we’re down 1 tree and a few hundred grand in prison costs.
Can’t wait for all the “jailed for pruning a tree” comments we are going to see everywhere for the next few months.
2 years community service planting trees would have been a better punishment and some delicious irony
Should have really got a month for every year that tree was old. So 12 years.
Pair of wasters.
Good to see justice. Pair of clowns.
Bit odd how the judge ordered the destruction of a Range Rover belonging to one of the men though, just because he used it to drive there…
Should have spent the £450,000 prison cost on saplings at £3 a go. Make them plant 150,000 trees for the next however many years.
Waiting for the inevitable *it was just a treeeeee* comments to land. Yeah, and your granny’s just a biscuit tin full of ash, but if I curled one off in there you’d not be my biggest fan.
Of course I’ll get downvoted, but millions of trees get cut down every year, you ain’t buying any wood without it. Millions of animals get their homes destroyed and nobody gives a flying fuck.
Chop a tree down that’s been in Robin Hood and makes a nice photo opportunity and it’s like it’s literally the most abhorrent crime imaginable.
They should be punished cos they’re just idiots, but the outrage over a single tree being chopped down is insane. Stop pretending you care so much.
Good. Pricks. I hope they get the shit kicked out of them in prison.
They should have been turned into mulch for compensation to the tree’s family 😔
Turn them into mulch for the next generation of trees.
A pointless crime by two feckless morons who look like life didn’t want to shit them out.
They absolutely deserve that time but I do find it stupid that in this country people will commit more heinous crimes and do less time.
I’m awaiting the sentences the Manchester airport scum and Ricky Jones get. They’ll be longer I’m sure.
“What’re you in for?”
“…I cut down that famous tree that lots of people liked”
Unreal to get 4 years & 3months for chopping down 1 tree. Apparently an average £51k per year for a prison which means prison costs of close to £440k in prison costs + the million or more in combined costs of the prosecution.
I’m not saying they get away with it. I do look at the costs of investigating, prosecuting & jailing 2 people over 1 tree and wonder if there is some cheaper way to bring this to a close. Such as plant 1000s of trees with that money.
That seems about right tbh, yes it’s just a tree but it was also an assault on regional culture and identity, and a very public bit of antisocial behaviour. It deserves a stiff sentence.
Part of me suspects this ecological tragedy happened somewhat because it’s become pretty much normalised by large sections of the political and media class to be against the cause of saving the environment.
The sycamore Gap tree was 150 years old. Various construction projects have destroyed much older and en masse, nevertheless the tree is a valued environmental resource as far as many are concerned. I dare say it would have supported a lot of other wildlife. It also brings us the human race great pleasure to experience trees thriving in a natural environment, which is under threat.
people asking why did they do it, what was their motive? I can only speculate but it doesn’t seem a stretch to say that they must have known it would upset a lot of people, and to them I can only speculate that hurting people who care about nature was probably their target audience. They don’t seem very bright, and it’s not for me to say if their sentence is unduly harsh. on the one hand your average motorway and major infrastructure project has destroyed much older and wider habitat, but that was legally sanctioned. Environmental protestors, some will argue get just as harsh if not harsher sentences. Not saying these men who killed a pretty significant contribution to our scare environment should not have been punished, it was a scummy and disgusting thing to do. I can’t help feeling they should have been made to appreciate the value of trees and the environment as part of their sentence. I’m not sure how they will fare in prison and whether they will come out even bigger C U Next Tuesdays, they sound like the archetype of macho dickheads to me