Reid, R v

LORD JUSTICE KEENE: On 21st October 2008 at Nottingham Crown Court this appellant pleaded not guilty to attempted murder (count 1 on the indictment) and not guilty to wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm (count 2). Some six weeks later on 2nd December 2008, by which time the trial date had been fixed, the appellant pleaded guilty on rearraignment to the section 18 offence. That plea was not at that time acceptable to the prosecution. However, the Crown subsequently did accept that plea and on 6th April 2009 the appellant was sentenced by Butterfield J to imprisonment for public protection under section 225 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, with a specified minimum term to be served of seven years, less 286 days spent in custody on remand. He now appeals against sentence by leave of the single judge who only granted leave because he regarded it as arguable that the minimum term specified was too long.

The victim in this case was a 42-year-old man called David Wilson who was clearly a vulnerable person. He had lost his entire right arm in a motorcycle accident some years before and he had also suffered some degree of brain injury. His short-term memory was consequently impaired.

There had been some friction between Mr Wilson and some of his neighbours in the past, one of those neighbours being a friend of the appellant called Walker. Walker said that he and his partner had been threatened some weeks earlier by Mr Wilson.

All of this came to a head on the evening of 20th June 2008 when the appellant and his wife visited Walker. Both the appellant and Walker proceeded to drink vodka and a time came when the appellant starting ranting about how much he hated the complainant and how he wanted to "do him over", as he put it.

There was some initial trouble and then the appellant and Walker drove off to the home of another man. There the appellant went inside on his own and came out with a carrier bag containing two Balaclavas and a 12-inch kitchen knife with a 5-inch blade. The two men then returned to Walker's flat where they changed their clothes and put on the Balaclavas, as well as some gloves.

They proceeded to go round to Mr Wilson's flat and banged on the door. He and a female friend came to the door, the former having equipped himself with a pipe from a vacuum cleaner - no doubt as some attempt at protection. When the door was opened the appellant, wearing the Balaclava and gloves and armed with the knife, attacked Mr Wilson who was very rapidly disarmed of the vacuum cleaner pipe. He was then attacked by the appellant with the knife, the appellant stabbing him repeatedly in the chest. The complainant was later found to have suffered a total of seven stab wounds to the chest, as well as two to his left arm. The knife blows severed the left mammary artery and a major vein, either of which wounds could have proved fatal. There was substantial blood loss, but fortunately the emergency services arrived on the scene very quickly. Had a police officer not applied pressure to the leakage point in the chest, the complainant would have died from the blood loss either at the scene or en route to hospital.

Meantime, the appellant and Walker had run off and the appellant burnt their bloodstained clothing in his garden. They were in due course arrested. In his interviews -- some seven in all -- the appellant gave no comment replies.

The appellant is aged 24. He has a considerable number of previous convictions including one for assault occasioning actual bodily harm in 2002, another of those later in that same year, another in 2004 and yet another in 2005. He also has several convictions for lesser assaults.

The pre-sentence report on him identified a medium risk of harm to members of the public, in some instances of very serious physical harm. Butterfield J held that the facts of this case and the previous convictions demonstrated that the appellant was a dangerous offender within the terms of the 2003 Act and that a determinate sentence would not suffice. For those reasons he imposed a sentence of imprisonment for public protection. That aspect of the sentence is not now challenged.

The one matter which is and which troubled the single judge was the length of the notional determinate sentence. The single judge rightly said that this was one which, as a minimum, implied a determinate sentence of 14 years' imprisonment. The single judge went on to equate that with a 21 year sentence after trial. In that he was in our view mistaken. This was not a plea to a section 18 wounding at the first reasonable opportunity, but a plea on rearraignment some six weeks after a not guilty plea and at a time when, as we have already indicated, the trial date had been fixed. The appellant was not entitled to the full one-third discount.

On his behalf, Mr Macnamara today argues that the implicit term of 14 years after a plea as a determinate sentence was manifestly excessive. He emphasises that all this happened after the appellant had been drinking and there was here this plea of guilty, by which time some additional medical evidence had been obtained. Nonetheless, Mr Macnamara accepts that there were here a number of aggravating features.

We agree that there were those aggravating features. This was a very grave case of section 18 wounding with intent, one of the most serious that one can imagine. As we have said, Mr Wilson could well have died and it was fortuitous that he did not. Had he died, the appellant would have been facing a life sentence for murder with a starting point for the minimum term to be served of some 15 years' imprisonment. Mr Wilson's injuries were clearly life-threatening and they were numerous, indicating a sustained attack. Moreover the offence was aggravated by two further features. First, this was a planned attack involving the obtaining of a knife, gloves and Balaclavas from elsewhere and the carrying of those articles to the victim's own home where the attack then took place. Secondly, the victim was patently vulnerable, as we have said already, because he had only one arm and had suffered earlier brain damage. He was effectively unarmed when he was attacked by these two men.

For these reasons such a violent, sustained and life-threatening attack on a vulnerable man required a very lengthy prison sentence. Had there been a trial a term of some 16 or 17 years' imprisonment could well have been anticipated. The notional determinate sentence of 14 years made, in our judgment, adequate allowance for the late plea of guilty. The specified minimum term of seven years' imprisonment is not therefore manifestly excessive and this appeal in consequence is dismissed.