From: billy@anon.com 
  
 "GB"  wrote in message 
 news:107sfv9$2944s$2@dont-email.me... 
 > On 17/08/2025 09:10, Pancho wrote: 
 > 
 >> So the question remains, why did Lucy Connolly plead guilty when there 
 was a 
 >> reasonable chance a jury would acquit her? 
 > 
 > The evidence against Lucy Connolly was very strong. There was no getting 
 away from the 
 > fact that she typed those words. She wasn't suggesting she lent her 
 computer 
 to someone 
 > else, who impersonated her, for example. So, I don't think there was any 
 sensible 
 > defence. 
  
 So what exactly was the evidence, that in typing those words Lucy Comnnely 
 with her message which was reposted 940 times and viewed 310,000 times 
 actually foresaw the possibility of it inciting racial hatred in anyone ? 
  
 Surely the fact that she subsequently took the message down meant that 
 at the time, she hadn't forseen such a possibility; which thus far at 
 least remains *a totally unproven consquence* of her poating. 
  
 When in reality, did it actually encouraged racial hatred in anyone at all ? 
  
 Wasn't she 
  
 a) Either preaching to the already converted, or at least so she thought ? 
  
 b) Simply acting out her role as Mrs Angry who she realised nobody took 
 really seriously 
  ?b) simply expressing the incoherent sense of hopelessness of the 
 truly bewildered ? 
  
 The kind of people in fact who can be easily persuaded to plead guilty 
 when in fact they are not ? 
  
 > 
 > I think you are suggesting that, had it gone to trial, the jury might have 
 disregarded 
 > the very strong evidence and found her not guilty. That is a possibility, 
 but is it 
 > actually a 'reasonable chance'? 
  
 What evidence ? 
  
 Your only evidence concerns her typing words on a keyboard 
  
 I would suggest that you also need evidence of the effects of those words 
 on a screen on anyone at all. 
  
 Because when you think about it, right wing knuckle draggers 
 notwithstanding, when you have situation where people can supposedly be 
 incited to hatred, merely by reading words on a computer screen, then the 
 situation has already been allowed to get out of hand. 
  
 Legislation drafted, it hardly needs to be added, by politicians who 
 sincerely believe, that the general public actually believes a 
 single word of anything they say, which appears on their own 
 computer screens. 
  
 And society surely owes it to poor bewildered people such as Lucy 
 Connoly, who you see before you in the dock today, not to allow 
 situations such as this, to develop in the first place 
  
 > 
 > I honestly don't know. She'd have needed at least 3 jurors who decided out 
 of sympathy 
 > with her views to disregard their vows and acquit her. Then, she'd have 
 needed to 
 > repeat that trick at a retrial. 
 > 
 > Would that chance be worth a 33% increase in the sentence if she didn't 
 pull 
 it off? 
  
 With a decent Defence it wouldn't have gone to a hung jury in the first 
 place. 
  
  
  
 bb 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)