Dillion, R v

MR JUSTICE HOLROYDE: On 15th December 2016, in the Crown Court at Wolverhampton, this applicant was convicted of two offences, which he had committed on 18th June 2016. Count 1 was an offence of acting in breach of a restraining order, count 2 was an offence of making a threat to kill.

On 11th January 2017 the applicant was sentenced by His Honour Judge Tregilgas-Davey to a total of 2 years' imprisonment, comprising concurrent sentences of 1 month on count 1 and 2 years on count 2.

Both the trial and the sentencing took place in the absence of the applicant. He had had every opportunity to be present and he had the advantage of counsel being available to represent him, but he declined to engage with the proceedings and refused to come into court.

The applicant subsequently applied for a short extension of time in which to apply for leave to appeal against his total sentence. Those applications were refused by the single judge for reasons which he carefully explained in written reasons which the applicant has received. The applicant now renews the applications to the Full Court.

Each member of the court has read and considered all of the papers put before us, but in accordance with the usual practice on a renewed application we will express our decision and our reasons for it shortly. To summarise the relevant circumstances, on 12th October 2011, in the Crown Court at Wolverhampton a restraining order, under section 5 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, was made against the applicant. It prohibited him from entering a number of specified Lidl stores in the Wolverhampton area. On 18th June 2016 he was seen by a police officer entering one of those stores and therefore acting in breach of the restraining order. He was arrested. He abused the police officer with foul language. He continued his abuse as he was taken into custody.

At the police station his abuse turned into something much more sinister. He told the arresting officer that he would "get someone to sort you out". He said that he could get hold of a gun and one bullet would do it. He then told the officer that he knew the officer's daughter was 11 years old and he described how he had observed the officer taking a particular route to pick his daughter up from a particular school which the applicant identified. He also mentioned other personal facts about the officer. Unsurprisingly this caused the officer to fear for his own safety and that of his family.

When interviewed the applicant was obstructive. He contended that he was allowed to shop in Lidl because he was not the person the police thought they had arrested and he denied he had threatened the officer.

Those being the circumstances which resulted in convictions, the learned judge adjourned the matter for a pre-sentence report. The applicant, perhaps predictably, refused to co-operate with that procedure. Accordingly no report was available to the learned judge and none is necessary at this stage of the proceedings.

The applicant has many previous convictions. On a total of 17 occasions he has been sentenced for a total of 44 offences. Many of the offences have involved the use of vehicles, including serious offences of dangerous driving and driving whilst disqualified. In addition, he was convicted in 2006 of two offences of assaulting a police officer. Coming to more recent times, in July 2015, the applicant was convicted of dangerous driving and driving whilst disqualified. The circumstances of those offences involved his driving at a police officer, who suffered an injured shoulder. For those offences the applicant was sentenced to a total of two-and-a-half years' imprisonment. His application for leave to appeal against that sentence was refused by the single judge. He renewed it to the Full Court. It was again refused and the Full Court made an order that 7 days spent thus far in custody should not count towards his sentence.

Then in November 2016 the applicant was sentenced to 12 weeks' imprisonment for an offence of assaulting a police officer on 18th May 2016. The circumstances of that offence were that he was being escorted in handcuffs through the custody area of a police station. With his two hands he struck a police officer in the face, causing a bloody nose and a swollen lip. That offence was committed only a month before the offences with which the court is concerned for today.

The learned judge, in his sentencing remarks, referred to those previous convictions as an aggravating feature of the case. He noted that by the time the threat to kill was made the applicant had been under arrest for some 20 or 30 minutes and had therefore had the opportunity to calm down from any agitation he may have felt at the time of the arrest. The judge observed that threatening to kill a police officer who is acting in the execution of his duty is a serious offence. It clearly passed the custody threshold and merited the sentence to which we have referred.

The application for leave to appeal was made out of time. The applicant explained the delay by saying, whether rightly or wrongly we do not know, that his lawyers had told him they would launch an appeal but had not done so.

The application was rightly treated by the officials of the court as an application for leave to appeal against sentence. The applicant had ticked the box on the form indicating that that was so and had put forward grounds of appeal against sentence. He had written on the form "and conviction" but had put forward no effective grounds for an appeal against conviction.

In his recent correspondence with the court the applicant appears still to wish to appeal against the conviction. He has however made no proper application and has still shown no possible basis for such an appeal. His principal complaint in so far as it emerges from his correspondence, appears to be that the learned judge gave no Turnbull direction at trial. That point is simply misconceived.

Other misunderstandings and misconceptions are evident in the correspondence relating to the appeal against sentence. The applicant has made many points. Some are plainly irrelevant, some are very hard to understand. By way of example, he appears at one point to complain that the criteria for an extended sentence of imprisonment were not met. At another point he appears to seek to invoke the procedure by which the Attorney-General can refer a sentence to this court as being unduly lenient. He makes complaints about judges who have been involved in various hearings at various times. He seems to wish to appeal against the restraining order made now more than 5 years ago. But in essence, coming to the heart of the matter, he seems to say that the sentence of 2 years' imprisonment here was much too long and that any sentence should have been suspended.

We disagree with those submissions. This was a serious offence against an officer discharging his public duty. It was significantly aggravated by the previous convictions which we have mentioned. There appears to be no real mitigation, save for such mitigation as might have been found in the evidently confused thinking of the applicant. We can see no possible ground for saying that the sentence was excessive still less manifestly excessive. Nor can we see any possible ground for suspending the appropriate sentence.

Thus, this renewed application must fail. But we add this. When the single judge refused leave on the papers he warned the applicant expressly that the Full Court might make a loss of time order if the application were to be renewed and again refused. The applicant, as we have indicated, has already had experience of a loss of time order.

His renewed application and his repeated correspondence have caused much judicial time and much time of the officials of the court to be spent in the preparation and consideration of this hopeless application. The inevitable result is that other more deserving appeals have been delayed.

We make allowance for the confused thinking to which we have referred, but we do not think that we can properly overlook the fact that the applicant has again taken up much time of the court and the resources of the court for no good reason at all.

In the result, we refuse the renewed applications. We direct that 28 days of the time in custody to date should not count towards the applicant's total sentence of 2 years' imprisonment.