Lavinia Woodward: Stab attack student quits Oxford

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An “extraordinarily able” student spared jail for stabbing her boyfriend will not return to Oxford University.

Lavinia Woodward pleaded guilty in 2017 to unlawful wounding at Christ Church college while drunk.

At Oxford Crown Court, Judge Ian Pringle QC suspended her 10-month jail sentence, having said immediate custody would damage her career.

Now the college has told the Tab the 26-year-old “has formally withdrawn from the college and the university”.

Woodward had voluntarily suspended her studies at Oxford until the end of her sentence when she would have faced a disciplinary procedure if she had decided to return.

The case prompted a debate about inequality in the criminal justice system, after Judge Pringle described Woodward as “an extraordinarily able young lady”.

He said sending her to prison would damage her hopes of becoming a surgeon, and initially deferred her sentence to give her a chance to beat her drug and alcohol addictions.

Last year, Woodward tried to appeal against her sentence but she was denied permission by the Court of Appeal.

Judge Johannah Cutts said Judge Pringle had taken an exceptional course by suspending her jail term, and his sentence was “constructive and compassionate”.

Oxford Crown Court heard Woodward attacked her then boyfriend, whom she met on the dating app Tinder, in December 2016.

She became angry when he contacted her mother on Skype when he realised she had been drinking.

Woodward threw a laptop at him and stabbed him in the lower leg with a breadknife, also injuring two of his fingers.

In his sentencing remarks, Judge Pringle said there were “many mitigating features” of the case.