R v Donna Wynstanley

The applicant is now 44. On 8 August 2023 in the Crown Court at Shrewsbury, she changed her plea to guilty in respect of four counts of supplying Class A drugs arising out of two separate drug conspiracies. On 2 September 2024 she was sentenced to 5 years and 6 months' imprisonment. She renews her application for permission to appeal against that sentence following refusal by the single judge.

The first conspiracy was the subject of "Operation Alps". It was a drug phone line operated from Liverpool and headed up in the Oswestry area by David Hulse. The relevant period of operation was between 1 June 2016 and 30 January 2018. This was a significant street-level dealing enterprise which sent out group flare messages to drug users advertising both heroin and crack cocaine. Over this 18-month period 338 separate flare messages were sent out to phone numbers, sometimes sent to 167 separate members at one time. Hulse had not only set up the drug line in Oswestry on the instructions of those above him but he was also responsible for picking up the drugs in Liverpool and Wrexham and taking them to Oswestry, where he bagged them up.

The applicant was a user of Class A drugs and acted as a street dealer for Hulse from December 2016 onwards. She would receive instructions from him about the sales she was to undertake. She also had a role in sending out the flare messages from her own phone, with those messages going out to up to 32 other users in August and September 2017. She also made some trips to the same Wrexham postcode that Hulse visited, from where the drugs were being sourced.

The strike phase of Operation Alps came on about 6 March 2018. The applicant was arrested and various phones and scales with traces of cocaine on them were seized from her home address. She was released on bail.

The second conspiracy in which the applicant was involved was the subject of "Operation Arke". That was an investigation into a drugs line known as the "Boris line". That was again run from Liverpool and the organisers were well organised and extremely violent and persistent, exploiting vulnerable young people to act as dealers. Again, it involved heroin and crack cocaine.

Following her release on bail from the first conspiracy, the applicant then became a street dealer for the Boris line in the Oswestry area. At the behest of the organisers of the Boris line, on 25 April 2019 the applicant met a co-defendant, Bibo El-Homsi. The Boris line then made a 1-minute call to the applicant and issued a bulk text to 55 recipients. Thereafter the applicant and a co-defendant, Glen Pritchard, were the street dealers for the Boris line.

On 12 May 2019 the Boris line was topped up by the applicant and, in the CCTV footage of the incident, the applicant could be seen with a bundle of cash and a mobile phone. On 15 July 2019, she was arrested and interviewed in relation to the supply of Class A drugs using the Boris line. She denied any involvement and maintained her denials until she belatedly changed her plea.

When the judge sentenced those involved in these two conspiracies, he set out the history and the individual factors relevant to each of the defendants before him. As to the applicant, he noted that she had a lesser role, albeit with an uplift due to features of a significant role in respect of that first conspiracy. He put the offence into category 3 because it was street dealing, but noted that, by reference to the sentencing guidelines, an uplift might be appropriate because of the amount of drugs involved. He said in respect of the applicant that a range of between 2 and 4½ years' custody was indicated.

The judge concluded that, in respect of the first conspiracy, the appropriate sentence for the applicant after trial would have been one of 4½ years' imprisonment. He gave credit of 10 per cent for the late guilty plea, which rounded down in the applicant's favour, produced a term of 4 years. In relation to the Boris line conspiracy, he said that the appropriate sentence would have 4 years after a trial, which he rounded down to 43 months (again in the applicant's favour) as credit for her plea. In the light of totality, he proposed an overall sentence of 5½ years to reflect both conspiracies and passed that sentence concurrently on each of the offences. That term could be said therefore to have been made up of 4 years for the first conspiracy, and 18 months for the second.

There are four complaints about that sentence. The first is that the judge failed to have proper regard to the correct categorisation of the offence. The second is that the judge applied an unjustified and excessive uplift to the starting point. The third is that the judge failed to have proper regard to the delay in the investigation and the prosecution of the case. The fourth is that the judge failed to have sufficient regard to the applicant's mitigation. The first two points go to the notional sentence of 4½ years for the first conspiracy prior to any discounts. The latter two complaints are general.

The single judge was unimpressed with these points. He pointed out that:

We respectfully agree with the single judge. Although there are specific answers to each of the four points raised, the single judge has neatly encapsulated why this application for permission to appeal is doomed to fail. Not only was the sentence not manifestly excessive but a longer sentence may well have been justified. The advice on appeal wholly overlooks the fact that the applicant was involved in two separate serious drug conspiracies.

As to the particular criticisms raised, our response is as follows. As to the first two points, category and role, this fell into category 3 because it was street dealing. For a lesser role the starting point in the guidelines is 3 years and the recommended range between 2 and 4½ years. The judge was entitled to go to the top of the recommended range for the first conspiracy because of (a) the likely amount of drugs involved and (b) the fact that by advertising the drugs on the telephone and making trips to the place where the drugs were held the applicant played more than a lesser role. The 4½ year starting point in respect of the first conspiracy was therefore entirely justified. No criticism is made of the 10 per cent reduction for the guilty plea which produced a final term of 4 years.

As to the third point, the judge expressly had regard to delay in his sentencing remarks. (see page 8C-D of the transcript of the sentencing remarks), so the criticism that he did not simply does not stand up. Cases of this kind always take time to investigate, and of course the applicant's guilty plea was itself very late. Moreover, it cannot lie in the applicant's mouth to complain about the delay in the police investigation into the first conspiracy, in circumstances where she positively took advantage of that delay when on bail and chose to involve herself in the second conspiracy to supply Class A drugs. That was an acutely aggravating factor which the judge generously, it seems to us, did not take into account when adding just 18 months to the total sentence for the second conspiracy.

The judge expressly referred to mitigation at page 8E of the transcript. He referred, amongst other things, to her health issues, the abuse she had suffered in the past and her carer responsibilities. His sentence indirectly reflects those matters; his rounding down, for example, was always in the applicant's favour. Moreover, the judge took a generous approach to the second conspiracy. In our view, an additional term of 2 or even 2½ years would have been justified for the second conspiracy, even having regard to totality. That more than made up for any perceived oversight in respect of delay and the applicant's personal mitigation.

We come back to where we started. Was 5½ years manifestly excessive for the applicant's involvement in two major drugs conspiracies both concerned with the supply of heroin and crack cocaine? The answer is emphatically "No". For those reasons this renewed application for permission to appeal against sentence is refused.

The single judge explained, in clear and cogent terms, why the sentence in this case was not manifestly excessive and could have been higher. This renewed application appears to us therefore to have been a knee-jerk reaction: since a renewed application was available, why not make it? The Criminal Appeal system is overburdened with these hopeless renewed applications for permission to appeal. They take up valuable time and waste finite resources. The only thing that this Court can do to try to reduce the number of such renewals is to make a loss of time order in an appropriate case. This is such a case. Accordingly, we make a loss of time order of 28 days.