This was the moment a judge sentenced a student to 15 years in prison for stabbing another young man to death - captured on camera in a historic first for Manchester's courts. A TV camera was allowed into the city's crown court for the first time in a Manchester homicide case, following a change to the law.
Judge Nicholas Dean KC, the Honorary Recorder of Manchester, was filmed as he sentenced Shiloh Pottinger for stabbing 19-year-old student Luke O'Connor to death. The sentencing of Thomas Cashman, for the murder of Olivia Platt-Korbel in Liverpool, was the first case held at Manchester Crown Court to be televised, after the trial was moved to this city.
But the sentencing of Pottinger, for Luke's manslaughter, was the first Manchester case to be filmed and broadcast. Unlike in the US, the only part of the court hearing that can be filmed is the judge's sentencing remarks.
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The judge said: "Any parent whose child departs for university at 18, as Luke had, will feel a sense of trepidation about what their child might encounter, particularly, perhaps, in a large city.
"No parent, though, expects their child to be senselessly attacked and killed. Their child's life, to be taken away in events which from start to finish, which lasted just a handful of seconds."
Pottinger, 20, stabbed Luke eight times during a senseless attack in Fallowfield in October last year. The court heard that Luke's friend made a 'jocular' remark about Pottinger's skateboard, before he produced a knife he'd bought online from China.
The judge said that one of Luke's qualities was that he 'stood up to bullies'. "That Luke stood up to you was what led you to attack Luke in the way that you did."
"During the trial you told many lies," Judge Dean told Pottinger. He said Pottinger's claim that he'd bought the knife, a 13-inch 'mafia stiletto' weapon, to carry out repairs to his skateboard was an 'out and out lie'.
The judge continued: "You bought the flick knife because you found it desirable, in my judgement you bought it because it gave you a sense of empowerment to carry it." Pottinger was sentenced to 15 years in prison, after being found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter.
When the change to the law permitting filming in court was announced, the country's most senior judge, Lord Burnett of Maldon, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, said it was designed to increase open justice and the understanding of the criminal courts.
He said: "It’s something that I was really keen should happen and I started working on it when I became Lord Chief Justice in 2017. The law was introduced in 2020.
"And we all hoped that we would start filming sentencing remarks in high-profile criminal cases in the summer of 2020 and were it not for Covid, that would have happened, but now it is happening. I think it’s an exciting development, because it will help the public to understand how and why criminals get the sentences that they do in these very high-profile cases."
Broadcasters can apply to film court hearings, with the final decision being in the hands of the judge dealing with the case. Currently only cases being heard by high court judges, judges sitting at the Old Bailey in London or senior judges at court centres around the country, known as Honorary Recorders, can be filmed.
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