Two men were sentenced on Friday for cutting the beloved of Britain Sicomorous gap tree In 2023 in an inexplicable act or vandalism that caused broad indignation.
Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers were declared guilty by a jury of the Newcastle crown of two charges of criminal damage for cutting down the tree and knocking it down on the wall of old Hadian.
The tree was not the largest or oldest in Great Britain, but was appreciated by its picturesque symmetrically planted environment between two hills along the old wall built by Emperor Hadrian in the year 122 AD to protect the northwest border of the Roman Empire. The tree was a set on a dip in the Hadrian wall in a landscape without trees.
The tree had been known by the locals, but received international attention in the Kevin Costner movie in 1991 “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”. He drawn tourists, lovers, landscape photographers and even those who spread the ashes of loved ones. He was voted as “English tree of the year” in 2016.
“For more than a century, Sycamore Gap has an iconic natural milestone in the northeast of England, bringing immeasurable joy to those who visit the area,” said Gale Gilchrist, the main prosecutor of the region, in a statement after the virtator. “In a little less than three minutes, Graham and Carruthers ended their historical legacy in an act of deliberate and meaningless destruction.”
Lee Smith/Reuters 
The jurors deliberated about four hours on Thursday and reached a verdict after the meeting for less than 30 minutes on Friday morning. None of the defendants showed any visible reaction as the verdicts were read.
Judge Christina Lambert ordered both men detained until the judgment of July 15 and said they could face “a free period in custody.” The maximum sentence for criminal damage is 10 years in prison.
The defendant, once close friends, testified that they had nothing to do with cutting the tree. Graham pointed to Carruthers.
The prosecutors showed a granulated video of Graham’s phone about the tree that was cut, a video sent shortly after to Carruthers’s phone. The metadata showed that they were tasks in the location of the tree in the Northumberland National Park. The data showed that Range Rover of Graham had traveled there.
Prosecutor Richard Wright said he could not say who cut the tree and who held the phone, but the two men were the only people in the world who had the video on their devices.
The next day, Carruthers and Graham exchanged text and voice messages that captured their emotion when the story went viral.
Northumbria Police through AP 
Prosecutors did not sacrifice evidence of a reason for crime that is not to call it meaningless vandalism. But Wright suggested to the jurors in his final argument that the tree hastened to “a little laugh”, but he had not realized the anger that would trigger in the “arboreal equivalent of the meaningless matrix.”
“They woke up the next morning and soon realized, as the media rolled, since the public’s outrage was clear, it must have dawned that they could not see anyone smiling,” Wright said. “Far from being the great men they were, everyone else thought they were quite pathetic.”
Northumbria police said two never gave an explanation of their actions, adding that “there could never be a justifiable,” BBC News said.
Prosecutors originally said that the tree was valued at more than 620,000 pounds (around $ 830,000) and that the damage to the wall was estimated at 1,100 pounds (almost $ 1,500). But on Friday, prosecutor Rebecca Brown said that these figures are in dispute and are probably lower, but they would still fall into the upper category of damage for stagnation purposes.
The value of the tree is important since it is one of the factors that the judge will consider when deciding the sentences, the BBC reported.