Tuesday, 23 July 2013
Three men convicted of taking away a live badger have been resentenced by a court.
The trio were convicted at the city’s magistrates’ court in May of illegally taking a live badger – a protected species – from a wood at Burthwaite, near Carlisle.
They launched an appeal against that conviction, saying the animal seen by the two police officers on September 20 last year was a fox, not a badger.
But at Carlisle Crown Court last week, the judge, Recorder Michael Murray, rejected their appeal, telling the trio that he and the two independent magistrates sitting with him simply did not believe them.
Recorder Murray dismissed the men’s appeal against their convictions but said they would not be made to serve the prison sentences imposed on them at the magistrates’ court because they were “inappropriate”.
Shaun Dixon, 25, of Atkinson Crescent, Carlisle, and Anthony Paul Dowell, 24, of Tramside Way, had been facing a 140-day sentence. And Nathan Moorhead, 18, of Ridgemount Road, Carlisle, would have gone to prison for 60 days.
Instead, Dixon and Dowell were handed a 12 month community order and told to do 120 hours unpaid work. Moorhead received a 12 month community order and 80 hours unpaid work.
http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/carlisle-men-resentenced-for-trapping-badger-1.1072421