Rough Justice?

I would never condone what Edward Woollard, the 18 year old student protester did with his fire extinguisher http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12159581, but it raises one really important question. Was this young man rail-roaded through the court and judiciary system to be made example of?

It took the courts less than 6 weeks to try and condemn this young man, yet as someone who works in the Criminal Justice arena, most cases take up to 6 months to go from the charge to the sentence. This is unprecedented in UK courts; for it to be whizzed through at such a high speed smacks of the government interfering to ensure a message is sent out to other student protesters - don't mess with us or you will go down!

Woollard deserved a sentence; what he did was reckless endangerment at best and had the extinguisher hit anyone it would have killed them - no question. But why did it get pushed through the court system so fast? I have worked on cases involving everything from theft by finding to murder and they have all taken 6 times longer to get to court than this.