In a case that could be straight out of Dickens, a 64 year old widow faces five years in prison, while the thief who stole it from her got an early release from a sentence that was reduced to just six months.

The victim, Kathleen Woodward, was arrested when she reported a pistol that belonged to her late husband stolen. Briefly quoting the Telegraph report linked above:

He said police were at pains to point out that she seemed entirely honest to them and their assessment was that she simply left the items where her late husband, who died in 1999, left them. He had held shotguns under a firearms certificate but had no authority for the revolver. She told officers that the gun had been in the safe “forever” and would have been put there by her husband. She was aware of it but had taken nothing to do with it. She said: “I didn’t ‘keep it’ so much as I didn’t get rid of it. It sounds silly but that’s how I think about it now.”

A penalty of five years for simply failing to dispose of a weapon one’s late husband once had is the height of barbarism. If Mrs. Woodward is prosecuted for this, England can no longer be considered a civilized country.

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