This just in - a rare victory of sorts for cyclists in the Southland today. The Twittersphere says that the judge in this case received more than 270 letters and took none of them into consideration when he pronounced sentence.
From the LA Times:
Doctor sentenced to 5 years in prison for assaulting bicyclists in Brentwood
A doctor convicted of assaulting two bicyclists by slamming on his car
brakes after a confrontation on a narrow Brentwood road was sentenced
today to five years in prison. Christopher Thompson, wearing dark blue jail scrubs, wept as he apologized to the injured cyclists shortly before he was sentenced. "I would like to apologize deeply, profoundly from the bottom of my
heart," he told them, his right hand cuffed to a court chair.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Scott T. Millington called the
case a "wake-up call" to motorists and cyclists and urged local
government to provide riders with more bike lanes. He said he believed
that Thompson had shown a lack of remorse during the case and that the
victims were particularly vulnerable while riding their bicycles.
The case against Thompson, 60, has drawn close scrutiny from bicycle
riders around the country, many of whom viewed the outcome as a test of
the justice system's commitment to protecting cyclists. Millington
said he did not take into account more than 270 e-mails and letters
from cyclists that were filed with the court urging a tough sentence.
The July 4, 2008, crash also highlighted simmering tensions between
cyclists and residents along Mandeville Canyon Road, the winding
five-mile residential street where the crash took place. One cyclist was flung face-first into the rear window of Thompson's red
Infiniti, breaking his front teeth and nose and cutting his face. The
other cyclist slammed into the sidewalk and suffered a separated
shoulder.
Read the rest here.
