Should you receive a jail sentence for being an idiot on Twitter? Apparently so! Liam Stacey, the 21 year old who tweeted “LOL, Fuck Muamba. He’s dead” after the Bolton Wanderers’ collapse at White Hart Lane is off to spend 56 days in prison for this and other (unpleasant) “racially offensive” tweets. Cue much outrage everywhere.
The boy appears to be a moron, but should that be an imprisonable offence? I cannot see what crime has been committed here, save the trumped-up charge of causing needless and witless offence. Tedious as this may be it ought not to be a matter for the authorities. So I agree with everything Nick Cohen writes here:
I’ve no doubt that he’s a vile man, who by the sound of it was drunk at the time he posted, but what remains disturbing about the case is that the Crown offered no evidence that Stacey had incited racial violence or any other crime.
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