The wiliest crooks do not get caught. Less-able transgressors are convicted but with contrition they might escape a severe sentence.
Those who are given a suspended sentence but go on Facebook to insult the judge, and add “What a day it’s been at Burnley crown court! Up your a**e”, will not get a “like” from the criminal justice system, as two brothers from Accrington recently discovered.
Daniel and Samuel Sledden had admitted supplying cannabis. They expressed sorrow for their crimes to Judge Beverley Lunt and were each given a two-year jail term, suspended for two years.
They left court apparently penitent. Within 90 minutes, though, they had posted Facebook statuses that were somewhat south of remorseful.
Daniel Sledden wrote “Cannot believe my luck 2 year suspended sentance [sic] beats the 3 year jail yes pal! Beverly [sic] Lunt go suck my ****”.”
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The remarks were brought to the attention of Judge Lunt and the brothers were recalled to court.
Before they reappeared, however, Daniel wrote an apology on Facebook. This time, his language was strikingly orthodox and remarkably like that of a lawyer.
Daniel Sledden’s page declared: “I want to say how sorry I am for what I wrote about Judge Lunt and my sentence. I was very lucky not to be sent to prison and I was very stupid to have written what I did. I want to say sorry to Judge Lunt and to anyone else who was upset or offended by my thoughtless post which I did not mean.”
Referring to the tenor of the brothers’ original Facebook remarks, Judge Lunt noted that they were “boastful and jeering and the only reasonable inference was, they thought they had somehow fooled and misled the court”. The judge said she would not have suspended the jail terms if she had known the true attitude of the brothers. She then lifted suspension of the sentences, and the brothers were jailed for two years.
Postings on Facebook have drawn legal consequences in other unusual cases.
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In 2015, Stervenson Benjamin and Johnny Duverson were driving around in Palm Beach, Florida late one night, swigging on a bottle, smoking a joint, and saying that they were going to eat the worried-looking Great Horned Owl on Mr Stervenson’s lap. They were apparently unaware that killing the owl was punishable with a $15,000 fine and six months’ imprisonment.
The authorities became interested after Mr Durverson posted on Facebook an in-car film of the cruise adding the helpful commentary “we are drunk, we are high, we bout to take this thing home and eat it up . . .”.
Which type of social media postings will attract the attention of criminal justice systems is not always predictable. Earlier this year, Michael McFeat, from Scotland, was arrested in Kyrgyzstan, in central Asia, after making a remark about his dinner.
Mr McFeat was queuing with co-workers at Kumtor Mine for a traditional dish of horse sausage. He posted a Facebook status referring to the dish as “a special delicacy, the horse’s penis” — a remark that caused such offence that the miners went on strike and Mr McFeat was arrested for a racism offence carrying a maximum punishment of five years’ imprisonment.
Inept use of stationery once exposed the calumny of a judge. In 2002, Kent Coulson, a prisoner in Utah, wrote a letter to his girlfriend about the “crusty old judge” who was going to sentence him. Coulson wrote that he was going to pen a letter to the judge to “suck up” in order to get a light sentence for manufacturing methamphetamines. He speculated that he might benefit from the religious devotion of the “old ****”.
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Coulson, however, sent the letter intended for his girlfriend to the judge. Thereafter, he had five years at the Wasatch county jail in which to improve his office skills.
The most courageous rebukes to the bench in Britain have been those attributed to people in the court of Baron Jeffreys, the biased and savage 18th-century “hanging judge”.
In one case, after Jeffreys called the accused “a scoundrel,” the man is reputed to have replied using the art of the fleeting pause: “I am not as big a scoundrel as your lordship . . . takes me to be”.
In another case, the judge is said to have pointed his cane at the accused and snarled “There is a rogue at the end of my cane”. The valiant defendant replied with a query, “At which end, my lord?”
Gary Slapper is global professor at New York University, and director of its London campus. His latest book, Further Weird Cases, is published by Wildy, Simmonds & Hill. You can follow him on Twitter @garyslapper