The defendant and three others were charged with murder. The defendant and one co-defendant were convicted of manslaughter, while the other two co-defendants were convicted of murder. The incident involved the fatal stabbing of an individual targeted and chased by a gang. The sentence passed on the defendant, whom the judge held to be dangerous, was an extended sentence under section 226A of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, comprising 16 years’ imprisonment and four years on licence. The other defendant convicted of manslaughter was sentence to detention for ten years in a young offender institution. The defendant appealed against sentence on the grounds that (i) it was wrong in principle, in that the finding of dangerousness was not justified, given that he had no previous convictions, that the judge had not called for a pre-sentence report, and that an unjustified distinction had been drawn as between the defendant and the co-defendant convicted of manslaughter, and (ii) it was manifestly excessive.
On the appeal—
Held, appeal dismissed. The sentence was not manifestly excessive. Some cases of manslaughter were much closer to murder than others and had to be sentenced accordingly. The judge had been entitled to find that the case involved a deliberate and organised crime with the defendant being the leader of the gang and orchestrator of the events which occurred. As to dangerousness the Court of Appeal had stated that one could not assume from the seriousness of the offending alone that an offender was dangerous, but that did not say or mean that a finding of dangerousness was precluded just because it was it was the offender’s first offence, and the present case was an example of one in which on the facts the judge was entitled to make a finding of dangerousness. Other grounds of appeal were unarguable, so the appeal was to be dismissed.
Ali Bajwa QC (assigned by the Registrar of Criminal Appeals) for the defendant.
Jacob Hallam QC (instructed by Crown Prosecution Service, Appeals Unit for the prosecution.