Research Paper on:
Putting Together a Mitigation

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
that justice is served by the sentence not only be appropriate to the crime, but also to the criminal. This maybe delivered by the representation of the defendant, however, this  may also be undertaken by the defendant themselves under the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996. Information contained in this may look to a number of factors. The first  may be the circumstances to the crime (Elliott and Quinn, 2002). Here wee are told that Charles Dickens had stabbed his assistant with a pen, puncturing her lung, after criticised  the work he was doing as a journalist. We are not told of the circumstances in any greater detail, or if Mr Dickens is very repentant of the crime. However,  the attack weapon was a pen, therefore one of the mitigating factors will be that this crime was not premeditated, and that it was an unexpected result that this attack  resulted in such serious injuries to Mr Dickens assistant. It is not the normal case that a serous attack will be undertaken with a pen, or that this would be  expected to inflict such serious injuries. Therefore, form the pen alone we can take a fair assumption that he did not intend to injure his assistant to this extent.  When we consider the findings of the sentencing advisory panel there is also an indication of some relevant findings. This panel looked at cases in relation to sharp bladed instruments,  and advised that in many cases a custodial sentence was rarely appropriate. They also made it clear that the issue to be addressed by the court in the sentencing was  the intention of the defendant, and the relevant circumstances of the crime (Edwards, 2001). However, this should not withstand the recent publications of guidelines for the sentencing in Magistrate Courts