Originally Posted by
Basil
Intentional arson or being a culpable idiot who committed a criminal offence? If the former, I'd hang him; if the latter then I'd have thought the initial sentence sufficient.
(Must be getting soft in my old age)
Ignorance of the law is no defence to a criminal charge. By smoking when it was forbidden he was committing an offence.
The mental element here, which must be proved beyond all reasonable doubt, is the intention to smoke where it is an offence to do so. That he was warned not to smoke makes it easier to prove this.
As a matter of evidence, I'd think that it is reasonable to conclude that by going into the toilet to smoke he probably knew this. If he had given evidence in defence, he would probably have been asked in cross examination why he went to the toilet to smoke and did not light up at his seat.
I find myself hard hearted. In my earlier life, before I retired and returned to Mzantsi, I was a lecturer in the Law Faculty of an English university teaching final year Law students who were taking the Criminology option. A local magistrates' clerk who was responsible for the training programmes for local Benches used to run sentencing exercises, based on real cases, for the Penology segment of the course. The material he used was Court of Appeal judgments. When the students expressed shock at a sentence, he used to say grimly, "He sentenced himself!"