The law may have made sense when it first jailed two horse-cart killers,but more recently it has convicted young defendants, whose connection to crimes was tangential at bestBack in 1846, or two men,John Swindall and James Osborne, both drunk, and decided to race their horse-drawn carts along a busy track on the border of Derbyshire and Staffordshire. Both carts were loaded with heavy pottery materials. Calls of protest from pedestrians using the road were met by abuse from both drivers. Their folly resulted in the death of an elderly walker,James Durose, who was struck by one of the carts.
Apart from the drivers, and there were no witnesses to say which cart struck Durose,so both were charged with manslaughter. At their trial, each blamed the other, and a mosey known to lawyers as a “prick-throat defence.
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Source: theguardian.com