In November 2018 David Barton senior was jailed for 21 years for a massive fraud, which saw him swindle elderly residents out of more than £4m.
The criminal befriended then deceived wealthy pensioners at luxurious Barton Park Nursing Home in Oxford Road, Southport.
Barton snr was found guilty of five fraud offences, three counts of theft, false accounting and transferring criminal property after the longest trial in the history of Liverpool Crown Court - lasting more than a year.
Judge Steven Everett said: “I am struggling to remember anyone as dishonest as him, as morally bankrupt as him.”
Sentencing Barton, he said: “You are a despicably greedy man, a hypocrite who claimed you were caring for the residents. I’m quite sure the person you cared for the most is no one but yourself, not even your family, with your insatiable appetite for fancy cars and building your property empire.”
Benjamin Myers QC, prosecuting, told the two-day sentencing hearing Barton would groom “wealthy, vulnerable and childless” residents before draining their bank accounts and becoming a beneficiary in their wills.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/care-home-owner-david-barton-jailed-millions-fraud-liverpool-crown-court-a8447071.html
Legal leniency in 2020 for Barton
Nevertheless, lawyers for Barton have now (2020) persuaded a bench including the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett, that his sentence was "manifestly excessive" at a hearing of the Court of Appeal. Lord Burnett concluded:
"This was an exceptional case involving a high level of exploitative criminality that was targeted at vulnerable elderly individuals, and it undoubtedly merited a long overall sentence of imprisonment. The question for us is whether the total term is manifestly excessive. In respectful disagreement with the experienced judge who presided over the trial, we have concluded that a total sentence of 21 years is manifestly excessive for a man of 64 years of good character when taking into account the features we have identified. In our view, in all the circumstances, the total term was significantly too long."
So, was this overtly lenient judge correct in quashing the original sentence, pushing the latest legal U-turn in Barton’s favour or was he 100% wrong?
Just because a person allegedly has previously ‘good character’ it does not mean he should be treated with kid gloves by the legal system, after he is found to be involved in dreadful wrong-doing over a lengthy period.
Would Lord Burnett have favoured a sentence reduction if Hitler had been captured and only sentenced to life imprisonment after the war?
Hitler, a confirmed life-long Christian, also had a ‘good character’ (before his inroads into German politics) and was even widely regarded as a war hero from WWI after he received the Iron Cross Second Class in 1914 and the Iron Cross First Class in 1918.
https://www.otsnews.co.uk/southport-care-home-boss-who-conned-pensioners-out-of-4m-has-jail-term-slashed/
Furthermore, the new judge’s strange claim of Barton’s previously ‘good character’ seen rather far-fetched when we consider that his unsavoury activities spanned from 1997 to 2013 when he took millions from his trusting victims, so his wicked actions were no spare of the moment opportunist crime.
We the public are not being represented and not being protected by a deeply flawed legal system that is clearly failing us on a daily basis. Many people believe that the original Barton sentence was not “significantly too long” it was in fact overtly lenient - considering the terrible premeditated actions of that amazingly dishonest man.
The CPS case about Barton has in fact clarified the definition of dishonesty in criminal law.
In a pioneering judgement heard at the Court of Appeal, the CPS Specialist Fraud Division case has now clarified the legal test for dishonesty in criminal law. This ruling now means that juries must consider all the facts in the case, including the defendant’s knowledge or belief in the facts, before deciding whether the defendant’s behaviour is dishonest by the standards of ordinary reasonable people.
https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/cps-case-redefines-legal-test-dishonesty-criminal-law
The highly controversial “view” of Lord Burnett will undoubtedly be at odds with the large majority of the UK public who see his astonishing leniency as an apathetic travesty of justice and simply just another insult to the victims and their families.
More https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2020/575.html
Are you happy with the new lenient decision and does it serve real justice?
More
https://www.otsnews.co.uk/judge-jails-care-home-boss-barton-21-years/
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