R v TJ

No matter relating to the appellant (a youth) may be published that would identify him, including his name, address, any educational establishment or any workplace he attends and any picture of him. This order lasts until the appellant reaches the age of 18. In addition, no matter relating to the young victim of one of the robberies (who we shall refer to as "C") shall during his lifetime be included in any publication if it is likely to lead members of the public to identify him as being a person concerned in the proceedings including his name, address, any educational establishment or workplace he attends and any picture of him.

TJ, I am going to address our ruling to you, and I am going to use language which I hope that you will understand as I explain why the Court has come to the decisions about you that it has.

TJ, you are appealing against your sentence for six offences. You received a total sentence of 7 years 4 months which includes a term of detention of 4 years and 4 months, and a licence period of 3 years. You are now 16 and your offending took place when you were 13 and 15 years old.

I need to explain what you did that led to your sentence so others can understand the background to your sentence. On 27 November 2022, at 7.50 in the evening, when you were 13 years old, you were on a bus. Nineteen-year-old Alfie England was also on the bus. He was sitting with his headphones on watching a film. You sat behind him and hit him to the back of the head before kicking him several times. Alfie attempted to defend himself and you and he struggled with each other. You punched him in the stomach. As the bus came to a stop, you threatened to stab him (although you did not produce a knife) and you threatened him again before leaving the bus. For this behaviour you were charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm and you pleaded guilty.

In April 2023, you were convicted of possession of an offensive weapon (a machete) for which you received a referral order of 10 months in September 2023. On 19 March 2024, whilst you were still subject to the referral order and whilst you were on bail for the assault on Alfie (and by now aged 15), you embarked upon what can only be described as a violent rampage. At approximately 1.00 pm that day, you approached Raymond Hood as he walked along the street, and you demanded money from him before offering to sell him drugs. He told you that he did not have money and he did not want drugs. He also told you he had suffered a stroke before, and he asked you to leave him alone. Yet you hit him and pushed him to the ground and then kicked and punched him while he was on the floor. You repeatedly stamped on his head and strangled him. The incident was captured on CCTV which we have watched the attack was ferocious, and you continued to kick and hit him time after time, all while he was lying defenceless on the floor. The sentencing judge said he counted 20 punches, seven kicks and five stamps mostly aimed at the head.

As a result of your attack Mr Hood was hospitalised for 3 months with multiple fractures, bleeding, swelling, bruising and damage to his right kneecap. He had to wear a leg brace for 9 months. You were charged with causing grievous bodily harm to Mr Hood with intent and intentional strangulation. You pleaded guilty to both offences.

At around 3 o'clock that same afternoon, you went up to a 16-year-old boy (who we are referring to as "C") as he was walking home. You were wearing a balaclava. You told him to get out his mobile telephone and reset it. When C told you he did not know the password, you threatened to punch him in the face and break his fingers. You demanded he give you everything he had. He gave you his mobile telephone and a Hugo Boss watch. Afterwards C told the headteacher at his school what had happened. You went to the school and pressed the doorbell. You were seen waving a knife around forcing the headteacher to put the school in lockdown. In relation to C you were charged with robbery, to which you pleaded guilty. You were also charged with possession of a bladed article on school premises of which you were convicted after a trial.

At around 5.00 pm on the same day, you went into a shop which refurbishes and repairs mobile phones. You were again wearing a balaclava. Shiva Kanal was working behind the counter. You accused him of messing up your phone and demanded a new one. Some of your friends came into the store and surrounded Mr Kanal. CCTV footage captures you throwing various items at him including a chair, tripod, laptops and trolley. We have watched the footage. Some of the items hit Mr Kanal in the stomach. You and your friends stole around £50 worth of vapes. For this behaviour you were charged with robbery, and you pleaded guilty.

In sentencing you the Recorder said it was a difficult sentencing exercise. He reminded himself of the principles in the guidance for judges on sentencing young people like yourself. He focused his sentence on the most serious assault, that of Mr Hood, which he considered to be exceptionally serious. He decided your sentence would have been 13 years' imprisonment had you been an adult, which he then reduced by half to account for your age and then by a further third to take account of your guilty plea. This reduced your sentence to 4 years 4 months' detention. He decided that you are a dangerous offender because he considered your behaviour suggests there is a significant risk of you causing serious harm to the public in the future. This is why he decided you will be monitored on release for an additional period of 3 years in order to protect the public. For strangling Mr Hood, he considered a sentence of 21 months would have been appropriate had you been an adult, which he then reduced to take account of your age and guilty plea, imposing a sentence of 7 months' detention in a youth offender institution to run at the same time as your sentence for causing grievous bodily harm. For the robbery of C, he imposed a sentence of 8 months' detention in a young offender institution also to run at the same time, for possession of a bladed article he imposed a sentence of 8 months' detention in a young offender institution also to run at the same time and for the robbery of Mr Kanal, he imposed a sentence of 18 months' detention in a young offender institution to run at the same time. For the assault on Alfie England on the bus, he imposed a sentence of 4 weeks in a young offender institution again to run at the same time. Your total sentence was therefore, as we have already said, a custodial term of 4 years and 4 months with a licence period of 3 years.

On your behalf your barrister challenges your sentence on two grounds. Ground 1, she says that the judge was wrong in the way he sentenced you as a child. She says the judge treated you too much like an adult in his approach to sentencing you and that in turn led to an excessive custodial term, i.e. time in prison. Ground 2, she says that the judge was wrong to decide that you are dangerous given you are still young, and you do not have many previous convictions. A judge has already considered your case on the papers before this hearing today, so without a hearing, and she decided to allow your appeal to proceed to us to consider your barrister's argument that you should not be considered dangerous but the Single Judge rejected your barrister's argument that the judge did not adopt the right approach to sentencing you as a child or a young person. However, your barrister has asked us if she can still raise this argument before us. Before us your barrister has made clear submissions and said all that can be said in your case.

We agree with the Recorder that yours was a difficult sentencing exercise. You are very young, and you have experienced violence in your home whilst growing up which is a hard thing for any child to see. The doctors who have assessed you have explained that the violence you saw as a child will have affected you and contributed to the reasons why you are violent towards others. However, you had to be sentenced for a series of completely unprovoked and violent attacks on ordinary people going about their business. In the case of Mr Hood, he was much older than you and he told you he had been very unwell, yet you still launched a vicious attack on him. All three of your victims have talked about the distressing impacts that your violence has had on their lives.

Everyone agrees that there are some technical errors in your sentence because you must be sentenced in a particular way because of your age, and we will come to these shortly. But we start by considering your grounds of appeal. We say straightaway that we reject your barrister's argument that the judge adopted the wrong approach to sentencing you as a child or a young person. The judge carefully referred to the relevant guidance on sentencing young people like you and he identified the key principles that apply when sentencing someone your age. He reminded himself that sentencing young people like you is not simply a mathematical exercise, and he kept what he had learned about you and your life at the forefront of his mind when deciding on his sentence.

Your barrister also says that your sentence is wrong because you are too young to be considered to be dangerous and your barrister has taken us to cases about other young people, including R v Lang [2005] EWCA Crim 3864 and R v CW [2020] EWCA Crim 1970 to support her argument.

We accept that young people like you can be impulsive and that violent behaviour can be a phase that passes quickly as a young person matures. In light of your age and the fact that you only have one previous conviction for possession of a machete, we have considered very carefully whether the judge was right in his conclusion about you. We accept that you have not previously received any support by way of a youth rehabilitation order or a detention and training order. Nonetheless, we have come to the view that the judge was entitled to assess you as dangerous. In deciding this our focus is on the risk of serious harm you are thought to present to the public in the future, not on further punishment for you. In March 2024, you went on a violent rampage, attacking three different people in completely unprovoked attacks on the same day. Your attack on Raymond Hood continued while he was lying on the floor defenceless. As we have said, he was in hospital for 3 months and had to wear a leg brace for 9 months after your attack on him. These three attacks came after your unprovoked assault on Alfie England when all he was doing was sitting on a bus watching a film. They also came after your conviction for possession of a machete. The probation officer who assessed you considers you are a dangerous offender.

We are aware that a psychiatric report on you suggests you may have ADHD which contributes to your offending and your exposure to violence in your home from a young age makes life challenging for you. We have read the letter from the headteacher of your previous school, saying that your mental health difficulties have not been diagnosed which means you have been denied help with them. She says that you engage with help when it is provided, and your barrister today has told us about the other things you have been doing to help with your difficulties. These are good signs that you can change your life for the better. We have also read your letter to the sentencing judge about the guilt you feel about what you did. We encourage you to accept the treatment and support available to you during your detention and when you are released. You are still young enough to be able to change your life for the better. But it follows, as we have rejected your barrister's argument that you should not be considered dangerous, it follows from the same analysis that we do not accept your barrister's submission that your term of detention is too long.

I now need to correct some technical errors in your sentence. The Recorder sentenced you to detention in a young offender institution but detention in a young offender institution is only available where an offender at the time of conviction is aged between 18 and 20. That is by virtue of section 262 of the Sentencing Act 2020. Due to your age the Recorder should have imposed sentences of detention and training orders pursuant to section 234 of the Sentencing Act 2020. Secondly, the minimum term for a detention and training order is 4 months under section 236 of the Sentencing Act, which means a sentence of 4 weeks for the assault on Alfie England is an unlawful sentence and requires correction. Thirdly, for the offence of grievous bodily harm against Mr Hood the Recorder pronounced the determinate sentence as 4 years and 4 months' imprisonment. Given your age the sentence should have been one of ‘detention' not "imprisonment". Finally, the prosecution and your barrister are agreed that detention and training orders cannot be made concurrently to an extended sentence.

Accordingly, we have to correct these technical errors and we do so as follows: we quash your sentences for assault occasioning actual bodily harm, contrary to section 47 of the Offences Against the Person Act, that is the offending in relation to Alfie England; for intentional strangulation of Raymond Hood; for possession of a bladed article on school premises; for robbery in relation to C and for robbery in relation to Shiva Kanal. The extended sentence of detention, under section 254 of the Sentencing Act, of 7 years and 4 months which contains a custodial term of 4 years and 4 months, and an extension period of 3 years in relation to causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Mr Hood remains unchanged. All the other sentences we replace with no separate penalty. That makes no practical difference to the length of your sentence, but they are technical amendments to ensure that none of the concurrent sentences imposed on you are unlawful. To this limited extent your appeal succeeds. That concludes our ruling.