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news
Statue of Justice, Old Bailey (licensed CC BY 2.0 on Flickr by Ronnie Macdonald).jpgTexting driver jailed for 9 years for killing cyclist appeals sentence
A van driver who jailed for nine years in September after being found guilty of killing a cyclist in Hampshire through dangerous driving is appealing against his sentence.
Christopher Gard, aged 30 and from Alton, had been sending a friend a text to plan a dog walk when he crashed into 48-year-old cyclist Lee Martin, who had been riding in a time trial on the A31 at Bentley.
> Nine years in jail for texting driver who killed cyclist
At his trial, Winchester Crown Court heard that Gard had eight previous convictions for using a handheld mobile phone illegally at the wheel, and that after the fatal collision he had immediately tried to delete three text messages. He pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years' imprisonment.
Just six weeks before the crash that caused Mr Martin fatal injuries on the evening of 12 August 2015, Gard had convinced a magistrate to let him keep his driving licence.
BBC News reports that the Court of Appeal has passed Gard’s application for leave to challenge the sentence imposed on him to a “full hearing” to be held on a date to be confirmed.
After Gard was convicted in September and banned from driving for fourteen and a half years, Darrell Martin, the brother of the victim, said that the legal system had failed to prevent the tragedy happening.
"There were opportunities to stop the man from driving around,” he said. "Just six weeks before he had persuaded a magistrate not to take his licence away and promised to lock his phone in the boot.
He added: "The text message – think about how inane this is – it was about meeting his mate later and taking his dog for a walk. That's what killed my brother."
Rob Heard, road safety sergeant for Hampshire, said: "The majority of people know they should not be using their phone while driving, but appear not to understand what a huge distraction it is and what a risk they are taking. This terrible collision just shows the consequences of using your phone while driving and how it can ruin lives.
"It is a totally unacceptable risk to take. Gard had been given many opportunities to change his ways and still took the risk, causing a totally innocent person to lose their life.
This week, police forces across England and Wales have launched a nationwide clampdown on drivers using handheld mobile phones. A similar operation in May found 2,323 people breaking the law.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- don simon fbpe 1 sec ago
And your evidence for this is? Most bike shops I visit have separate workshops, Halfords have the mechanics working the tills, constant...
- don simon fbpe 3 min 17 sec ago
I know, it's shocking how underfunded the police are.
- essexian 1 hour 44 min ago
BBC News. Its easy to find: sadly.
- RoubaixCube 8 hours 26 min ago
And if you put the Gamel Helmet on back to front. You could become Robocop!
- Oldfatgit 9 hours 35 min ago
On the other hand though ......
- David9694 10 hours 8 min ago
Yeah, this whole thing can really just get to fuck. But that's what we're up against - the normalisation of the plucky chancer driver, the...
- don simon fbpe 11 hours 33 min ago
There are times when I think that these right whinger accounts are left wingers in drag, the aguments they espouse are so ridiculous, or don't...
- Cayo 11 hours 36 min ago
Or any non-drivist. A few years back, I was walking and crossing a side road not far from home. The road has particularly wide corners, especially...
- wtjs 12 hours 20 min ago
This was it in November 2022. Now you see the futility of reporting things to the police or DVLA
- katar_6 12 hours 25 min ago
I'm trying to login at my mobile and it says I need to subscreve. What should I do?
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59 comments
My mate is a solicitor and believe me, even the duty stuff still earns you a good crust. You won't worrying about the bank account unless you have expensive tastes.
He is quite good at it though, seeing as he got a woman off an assault charge by saying the defendant thought the victim was zombie!(should have said cyclist and got a community action trust reward)
I'm a little concerned given that this killer only got 2.5 years per person.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/31/mobile-phone-truck-driver-who...
Couple of people have asked whether the sentence can go up. Technically the answer is no. What can happen is that you can "lose time served".
If a person is in custody pending trial and/or sentence then that time essentially counts towards any prison sentence that they get. This is "time served". The Court of Appeal have the power (or had: I've not looked at this point in years but I doubt it's changed) to say that if a person makes a spurious appeal then a certain portion of their time served should not count towards their sentence. This has the same effect as adding time to the sentence.
It's relatively rare and I think it only happens if you appeal against the advice of your lawyer. Without knowing the full facts (I.e. rather more than we'll get from newspaper and internet reports), I can't say whether his lawyer is likely to have advised an appeal.
They need to send an advisory to all magistrates that this is the outcome of letting dangerous drivers keep their licence be a use it affects 'their livelyhood'
This. Exactly. So what if it affects their livelihood. They'll have to make alternative transport arrangements. End of the discussion.
Absolute scumbag. I hope that his sentence is increased
Please somebody conversant in criminal law tell me that if he loses his appeal he could get time added onto his original sentence.
Given how few people are prosecuted and how many offend by using mobiles it is beyond belief that one person can get 8 prosecutions. He must live on the phone continuously and it was bound to end this way.
There ought to be a way for judges to be prosecuted when they make judgements like the one to let him keep his licence.
Just to prevent too much waste of our taxes I hope such a bizarre appeal can and does result in a longer sentence with an award of costs
The legal system is nothing to do with fairness or justice, it is a game played by lawyers and judges for personal gain and ego. Not that I would care one jot should Mr Gard spend the rest of his miserable life in prison, but he is as much a plaything of the legal system and as irrelevant to the players as are poor Mr Martin's family.
Yes, that's quite right. Every lawyer in the criminal justice system is in it purely for the ego and the money. That's why they chose the least lucrative branch of law to practise in. Every one of the thousands of them is just in it for the game. Just like all drivers set out every day to kill as many cyclists as they can, all cyclists are perfect saints, traffic wardens only care about pissing people off and airline stewardesses always screw the pilot.
Thank God you're here to point these things out.
I like traffic wardens. I ring my bell and say hello.
Their job, and it cannot be an easy one, is to attempt to persude drivers to obey parking regulations.
No, we don't think "all drivers set out every day to kill as many cyclists as they can", just that not enough of them set off thinking about how not to kill cyclists.
"all cyclists are perfect saints"
Not this, either, but we wish the law would recognise and act on the difference between the risks posed by a crap cyclist in charge of 100kg moving slowly and a crap driver in charge of 2000kg moving quickly.
Yes, all of that is obvious. Nobody thinks that all cyclists are saints and nobody thinks that all drivers are murderers. Which is why it gets irritating when it seems perfectly OK to think that all lawyers are greedy egotists, all CPS don't care about cyclists' lives etc...
So Dan, are lawyers so poorly paid that they entertain delusional persons like Mr Gard into thinking that they has been poorly treated in sentencing just to earn a stale crust?
Will that lawyer still get some sort of income whether the appeal succeeds or not?
Not usually, no. For a few reasons:
1. The whole point of my rant is that criminal lawyers are just like everybody else: some may be angels doing the job because they like to help people, but they are vanishingly rare. Most do the job because, well, it's their job. Such people generally like to do their job well and to feel that they have helped make the world a little better. Very few do the job for ego (you'd be amazed how little "I'm a lawyer" gets you praise and admiration...) and while of course we do it for the money (how many doctors work for free?), and are not generally living in poverty, crime is not the way to earn good money as a lawyer. My income dropped when I started to specialise in crime, just as several of my contemporaries see their incomes double (or better) when they moved to family law or probate etc.
A lawyer giving advice on appeal (which you have to do, in writing, but don't get paid for, unless things have changed recently) is going to try to give correct advice because that's the job and most people don't set out to do their job badly.
2. If the whole "lawyers are actually human as well" malarkey doesn't do it for you then consider that barristers are generally self-employed, reliant on referrals from solicitors. If you go about giving bad advice on appeal, just to get yourself an extra appearance fee in the court of appeal, that word gets around rapidly and you will find yourself not getting any more work. It will also get noticed by the Court of Appeal, who may well report you to the Bar Standards Board for disciplinary action (including a fine, for those who still think that money is all-important to lawyers).
3. The fee for an appeal against sentence isn't that great, as far as I recall. From memory, it's a few hundred pounds (<£400, I think). Now, let's look at that in context.
I'm not saying "oh poor lawyers, we only get a pittance". That's not the point here. However, to get that few hundred, you first have to do your grounds of appeal, which takes a couple of hours, iirc. Then you need to keep the day clear in your diary to go to the Court of Appeal. This is an absolute pig because the thing that criminal barristers like doing, and that earns the best money, is trials. You can't be doing a trial if you've got to go to the Court of Appeal half way through, so that few hundred pounds is probably stopping you from earning more. It's also, for those living and working outside London, a hassle to have to go in. I hate going to the Court of Appeal. I always took the view that it was more bother than it was worth. Literally. That said, I still advised my clients to the best of my ability and went to the Court of Appeal if it was the right option because that was my bloody job. I don't know many people (some, but not many) who actually enjoy the prospect, fee or no fee.
That depends. When you first appeal, your grounds of appeal (the document you spent hours drafting for free) gets sent to a single judge of the Court of Appeal and they decide whether they think there may be some merit in it. If they agree then the case goes to a full hearing of the Court. If the Single Judge thinks your appeal is without merit then they refuse leave to appeal and the case stops there.
However, you can appeal against the Single Judge's decision by going to a full Court of Appeal hearing (3 senior judges, possibly including an openly gay ex-Olympic fencer; thank you Daily Mail). The catch is that you don't get paid for appealing against the decision of the Single Judge, unless you win.
The net result of all this is that of an appeal has merit then the lawyer gets paid. Which is fair enough. Note that "has merit" is not the same as "wins". There is a goodly amount of judgment involved in sentencing and the Court can turn down an appeal while still agreeing that it had merit. It is not uncommon, however, for them to say that it had no merit and for the lawyer to go home unpaid. This is also as it should be: if the Single Judge says your point is a bad one then you argue it at your own risk.
Of course, the slight disconnect is that it is the client's decision to appeal, not the lawyer's. I've advised appealing and been told that the client couldn't face another trial and would just live with the conviction. Equally, I've advised that there is no merit in an appeal and had the client insist on lodging one. If the Single Judge agrees with the client then OK, you're getting paid. More often, the Single Judge says no. At that point you can technically say that you're not going to act for him any further because you're not being paid. If he insists on going to the full Court (thereby risking losing his time served) then you can just wish him luck and be on your merry way. And good luck getting work from that solicitor again. In practice, unless things have changed since I used to defend, you go anyway. And you end up paying fit the privilege of going to court. Not that this is the only time that happens (I've often lost money on going to court; every criminal barrister has), but it certainly gets tiresome.
The short version of all that is that criminal lawyers are generally just regular people doing their job and trying to do it properly and well. Sometimes that involves good payday and sometimes it involves making a loss. In either case, you do the job properly because it's your job.
Well that's pretty shabby. I'm guessing any semblance of shame or conscience went out of the window with his brain.
My condolences and best wishes for Mr Martin's family. What this is doing to them must be horrible, and at the worst of times.
Here's hoping for 14 years.
To be fair, I'm sure he's just done some research and seen the average sentence for killing a cyclist is a £200 fine and he's wondering why he was so hardly done by.
I think you've hit the nail on the head there. He's received a proper sentence because he was caught using his mobile phone while driving. Had he not been using his phone he may well have got the usual pathetic fine and community service?
Give that this happened in Hampshire I'm surprised he didn't just use "the Hampshire defence" the cast iron get out of jail free card.
the sun was in the sky your honour! Why didn't you say so in the first place, have your keys back and be on your way.
Review it and give him extra time for the additional distress to the family.
If he had promised to keep his phone in the boot, and blatently lied, then surely that is contempt of court.
No, only if he's ordered by the court to do so. Conceivably perjury if he gave evidence that he would always put it in the boot but only if it can be proved that at the time he said that he didn't intend to do so.
So he can tell whatever lies he's instructed to offer up, and then say 'oh but I meant to'?
Scum of the earth. Rot, you piece of shit, Christopher Gard.
When I hear that some drivers have 12 points or more but are still driving, it makes my blood boil.
This is a perfect example of why they should be banned BEFORE they kill someone.
They are proven law-breakers. Fuck them.
I'm hoping he is appealing to make his sentence longer. Anything less than 9 years would be a joke.
What can he appeal against? He pleaded guilty. Surely he can't think the sentence is too harsh, he's already had 8 warnings!
Here's hoping it gets thrown out anyway.
Perhaps he didn't understand what the word 'guilty' means? I mean, he clearly didn't understand what "I'm really really sorry and I promise not to do it again, m'lud" means, did he??
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