The men who cut down the "Robin Hood tree" were sentenced to four years in prison.

London, July 15 (EFE).- A court in Newcastle (northern England) sentenced two men on Tuesday to four years and three months in prison for cutting down the tree popularly known as the "Robin Hood tree" in September 2023 and another six months for damaging the adjacent Hadrian's Wall, built by the Romans.

"I'm sure a major factor (in the felling) was sheer bravado," Judge Lambert said during the sentencing, which was attended by the convicted men, who found them both "equally guilty."

Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, two "experienced tree surgeons," will be released after serving 40% of their sentences at the latest, as Graham has been in custody since December and Carruthers since May.

One of the most photographed trees in the country

Sycamore Gap, as the tree was named, became famous when it appeared in the 1991 film "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" starring Kevin Costner and had become one of the most photographed in the country, along with Hadrian's Wall, a structure dating back to Roman times.

The felling of the sycamore, which Lambert called a Northumberland landmark and a "symbol of wild beauty," involved a "high degree of planning and preparation."

Graham and Carruthers drove 50 kilometers in the middle of the night through a storm from their homes in Cumbria, northern England, to Northumberland, where one of them cut down the tree while the other filmed it on his phone, according to the account of the events.

Deliberate action

The judge dismissed Graham's attempts to link the incidents to a supposed depressive illness, nor did she dismiss Carruthers's accusations of being solely responsible for the felling, whose lawyer went so far as to claim it was a "drunken act of stupidity."

"The felling of the tree demonstrated skill and required deliberate and coordinated actions. It was not the work of someone whose actions were significantly impaired by alcohol," the judge told Carruthers, while reminding Graham that he took photos of the chainsaw used in the trunk of his Range Rover.

When they were arrested, officers found the video proving their guilt on their phones, as well as messages discussing the logging, which they called "last night's operation," as a "savage" act that was going viral.

The Range Rover used to travel to Northumberland and Graham's mobile phone, which was used to record the events that shocked the nation, were also confiscated.