R v Umar Arshad

LORD JUSTICE COULSON:

The appellant is now 27. On 26 June 2025 following conviction he was sentenced to a term of 15 months' imprisonment for one offence of possessing a controlled drug of class B with intent to supply. A separate count of possessing a controlled drug of class B attracted no separate penalty. He appeals against that sentence with leave of the single judge.

The facts of the offending in this case are particularly unusual. The appellant had been on trial at Reading Crown Court with several other co-accused over June, July and August 2022. The appellant had been on bail, but many of his co-accused, including a man called Tuviah Thompson-Hordle had been remanded into custody. On 24 August 2022 the jury reached their verdicts and the appellant went into the dock. The appellant subsequently asked to use the toilet and had been allowed to do so. He went into a secure area behind the dock. Once the appellant had finished in the toilet he returned to his seat and the toilet was searched.

A cylinder, roughly 4 inches long, was found in the toilet paper dispenser. Inside that cylinder 47 grams of cannabis resin had been found wrapped in tobacco and clingfilm (count 1). The appellant was arrested and interviewed under caution and he denied knowledge of or possession of the cannabis. He was thereafter released under investigation.

Police officers later conducted a search of the appellant's home address where more cannabis and rolls of clingfilm had been found in a shed in the back garden (count 2). The appellant's DNA was later found on the inner-most layer of the clingfilm wrapping the cannabis which had been found at Reading Crown Court.

The appellant's mobile phone had been found to have been in contact with a mobile phone belonging to a man named Keilo Senior, who had been Tuviah Thompson-Hordle's cell mate at the time of the appellant's trial. In addition, the appellant had received two payments from Tuvia Thompson-Hordle's brother. It was clear from the messages sent by the appellant that he had expected to receive more than £500 for the drugs he left in the toilet. The appellant was arrested in relation to the offence and in interview he made no comment to questions asked by the police. As we have said, he was convicted after a trial.

The appellant was 27 at the time of sentence. He had four convictions for 10 offences spanning from 1 August 2018 to 10 January 2024. Those convictions included two drug offences.

The judge's sentencing remarks were very brief. He said:

The primary ground of appeal is that the judge erred in treating the supply of drugs into a custodial setting as a further aggravating factor because that was already a factor that had been taken into account in the categorisation of harm. The second criticism is that the judge erred in failing to find a realistic prospect of rehabilitation and therefore suspending the sentence.

In accordance with the sentencing guidelines, there is no debate that harm fell to be categorised in Category 3. That is because it involved the supply of drugs in a custodial institution. There is no dispute that the appellant played a significant role. Thus for this offence, the recommended starting point is one year's custody and a range of 26 weeks to three years' custody. We accept that this categorisation already includes supply in a prison context, so if the judge increased the sentence for that reason he was wrong to do so.

However, it seems clear to us that that was not what the judge said or meant to say. In our view one of the grossly aggravating factors here was that, quite separately from the supply of drugs into custody, the offence was committed in a court building at a time when the appellant was actually in the dock. In our view the decision to commit this offence in such a location portrays the utmost contempt for the rule of law. It was that additional factor that the judge was addressing.

There were other aggravating factors, including the appellant's previous convictions. So even taking the recommended starting point of one year, the aggravating factors would have taken it up to something like 20 months. There was some mitigation: personal mitigation, and the delay on which Miss Tai places some reliance this morning. But in those circumstances, even taking those factors into account, the 15-month term that was imposed was plainly open to the judge. It was neither wrong in principle nor manifestly excessive.

The second complaint is that the judge concluded that there was not a realistic prospect of rehabilitation and that the only proper sentence was one of immediate custody. We consider that that was a view to which the judge was entitled to come. In our view, given the circumstances of this offence and the appellant's decision to fight the case through to a verdict. notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence against him, we would conclude that only a term of immediate custody was justified. If a defendant wants to smuggle drugs into a court building, when hard-pressed dock officers are already overstretched but have to search toilets in consequence, then immediate custody is likely to be the inevitable outcome.

In those circumstances we reject the suggestion that the judge should have suspended this sentence. For all those reasons, this appeal against sentence is refused.