R v Kortnie Hardman

We will not keep the appellant in suspense while we give our reasons. We remind everybody of the reporting restriction in relation to the child who was a defendant in this case, which we mentioned at the start of the hearing and which we mention again now at the start of the judgment. The appeal will be allowed. The sentence will be suspended for 12 months. There will be a mental health treatment requirement which will require the appellant to receive and cooperate in the administration of 12 one-to-one sessions with the charity Turn Around as recommended in the pre-sentence report and there will also be rehabilitation activity requirements as recommended in the pre-sentence report. When the order of this Court is drawn up those requirements will be more particularly specified. We now give our reasons for the decision that we have reached.

On 24 September 2025, in the Crown Court at Leicester, the appellant pleaded guilty to an offence of assisting an offender contrary to section 4(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1967. She was sentenced by the experienced sentencing judge (HHJ Timothy Spencer KC) to an immediate term of 15 months' imprisonment. She issued an immediate application for leave to appeal against sentence which was referred to the Full Court by the Registrar. She had not been in custody prior to sentence, so that means she has been in prison between 10 October 2025, when sentence was passed and today 7 November 2025, when she will be released.

The facts of the case are striking and harrowing. We trust that they are unusual and find that they require an approach to sentencing in this case which would not be appropriate in most cases of assisting an offender where the offender at the time of the assistance is being sought for an offence of murder. The investigation arose out of the violent death of her former partner, Louis Howard. His name has been extensively reported already and there is no purpose to be served now in anonymising him. This undermines the protection the court can achieve for his three children. The eldest of those unlawfully killed Mr Howard with a knife, as we shall explain.

The appellant, who is 32 years old, and the deceased were in a relationship for very many years. It began when she was 13 and he was a few years older. They had three children together. The oldest was 16 at the time of the offence, the two younger children were much younger and we shall come to them shortly. There was a history of domestic violence which deteriorated or escalated towards the end of the time that the relationship lasted.

The prosecution and the defence agreed a basis of plea which deals with the background to Mr Howard's death, which occurred on 9 April 2025, when the oldest child (their son) used a knife which belonged to Mr Howard to stab him to death in the family home. That young man was eventually sentenced for manslaughter by reason of loss of control. The circumstances surrounding that, as reflected in the basis of plea, were as follows:-

“First, the appellant was subjected to many years of domestic abuse by Louis Howard including threats, violence and damage to property. Louis Howard kept a knife above the bedroom wardrobe.

Secondly, the appellant did not report each incident or support any prosecution as is common in cases of domestic violence.

Thirdly, on 9 April 2025, on the night of his death, Louis Howard was let into the property. The appellant had told their son to let him in because she did not want him to cause further damage to the property if they refused entry.

Fourth, Louis Howard became insistent of getting the appellant's telephone and patted her down and dragged her about in order to get it.

Fifth, after the stabbing, the appellant accepts lying in her initial accounts to the 999 operator and police to prevent her son's apprehension. The false accounts were all given within 30 minutes of the stabbing whilst remaining at the scene.

Sixth, the appellant gave a full commented account to the police in her first police interview and interviews thereafter. She identified her son as having stabbed Louis Howard. The pre-interview disclosure did not inform her of her son's apprehension and she was unaware of this when she provided her account. Ultimately the investigation against her son was not significantly affected by the appellant's conduct.”

That basis of plea sets out the essential framework on the basis of which sentence was to be passed. It is necessary to add just a few details to it.

The history of domestic abuse prior to the night of Mr Howard’s death culminated on 6 April in the latest of a series of episodes involving violence. Louis Howard had never inflicted serious injury on the appellant but he had frequently, over a period of years, assaulted her, threatened her, damaged her property, forced his way in and terrified her and the children. Such an incident took place on 6 April, which resulted in police action. A Domestic Violence Prevention Notice was served on him by the police and he signed to acknowledge receipt of it. He was arrested and released on police bail. The effect of both of these things was that on 9 April 2025 he was not allowed to go to this property, still less to prevail upon his partner and their eldest child to let him in, which they did by reason of coercion. The incident which resulted in his death occurred because he had gone to that property unlawfully and he knew it.

About 20 minutes after he arrived audio recording, created by CCTV cameras in neighbouring properties, captures a very loud and distressing sequence of events. It takes place over a short period of time but, from what can be heard, it is reasonable to infer that Louis Howard was shouting at the appellant, was attacking her in the way described in the basis of plea and that she was protesting loudly and asking him to stop. All of this could be heard by the neighbour's CCTV, so its impact on the two young children who had been asleep in the property can only be imagined. Its impact on the eldest child (the son) was to cause him to take up the knife which belonged to his father and to stab his father with it, inflicting a single blow to the chest which was rapidly but not immediately fatal. The appellant immediately tried to get help. She was so affected by the trauma of the episode which she had just witnessed that she could not unlock her phone so she gave it to the son who himself called the emergency services in order to call an ambulance. He was clearly very upset and concerned to try to save the life of his father by the time when he initiated that call, which we have listened to. Not long after it started the appellant took the phone from him and engaged in a conversation with the 999 call handler, in which she explained that the deceased was still alive and still breathing, but that there was a knife sticking in his chest. He had collapsed. She was told how to administer CPR and did her best to do so. When she was asked whether the person who had stabbed him was still there, she said that he was not (by this time he had left the house). When she was asked who it was she said she did not know. That was the first of the lies which constituted the offence of assisting an offender. She was attempting to prevent his apprehension or prosecution by not identifying him as the person who had committed this offence while he was escaping from the scene.

Paramedics and police officers quickly arrived. They between them arrived with a good number of body worn cameras which recorded conversations between the appellant and them about a number of things including what had happened. During those conversations also the appellant said that she did not know who had stabbed Mr Howard. She gave an absurd account of him having come into the property already stabbed with the knife sticking in him. It is perfectly clear from the reaction of the police officers recorded during those conversations that they did not believe her. It is also clear from the reaction of the person who fielded the 999 call that she did not believe her either. The investigation to find out where the young man was and to arrest him proceeded and resulted in his arrest within a matter of just a couple of hours. He had not gone very far.

The appellant was arrested on suspicion of murder and interviewed. When she was interviewed under caution, she gave a truthful account of what had happened including explaining to the police that she had seen her son stab his father to death in her own home. When she did that, she did not know, as was the case, that the young man had been arrested and so for all she knew at the time when she gave the police his name, he may have been still at large and hoping to avoid detection.

The incident which resulted in Mr Howard's death was plainly extremely traumatic for all involved. The young man who killed him pleaded guilty to manslaughter by reason of loss of control, which means that his power to control himself had been overborne to a very substantial extent by the behaviour of his father towards his mother. It is entirely understandable why that plea was accepted by the prosecution in the circumstances which happened. That in itself says something about the circumstances which the appellant found herself in that night.

There is now, and there was before the judge, expert psychiatric and psychological evidence which is relevant to sentencing in a number of ways but which confirms that when this incident occurred, the appellant suffered from a condition which was long-standing of post-traumatic stress disorder, caused or exacerbated by the lengthy period during which she had suffered the abuse that we have already described. The experts also say that there was an acute stress reaction triggered by the incident itself. That was the mental state of this appellant at the time when she took the decision not to name her son as the person who had killed his father and to persist in that decision for a period of about half-an-hour. It is probably unnecessary to say anything more about the circumstances of this episode, it having been sufficiently described already.

The judge had a pre-sentence report about the appellant. He knew that she has no previous convictions, and he had the medical and psychological reports which we have already referred to, the authors of which were Dr Lisa Wootton and Dr Lucy Warner. The judge sentenced this appellant at the same hearing during which he sentenced the young man for manslaughter and a neighbour who had also assisted him and fell to be sentenced for assisting an offender. Her personal circumstances and the assistance that she provided to him were very different from those of the appellant. Neither of those people who were sentenced on this occasion has an appeal before us today and nothing that we say in this judgment has any relevance to the outcome of any appeal which they may seek to pursue before this Court. We are concerned only with the appellant.

Before us there is a letter from the headteacher of the school to which the two youngest children go and there is a pre-appeal report prepared at the direction of the Registrar at the time when she directed that this appeal should be heard by the Full Court on an expedited basis. That is material which the judge did not have. It relates to the devastating impact which their mother's imprisonment has had on the two young children. Their younger son was born in May 2016 and their youngest child (their daughter) was born in August 2017.

There was material before the judge in the expert reports and the pre-sentence report which predicted that given the traumatic experience to which they had been exposed on the night of their father's death and the long history of domestic abuse which we have described, and in the case of the son, the middle child, in particular from some educational difficulties from which he suffers, the loss of their mother's care was likely to be devastating. The effect of the new material is to confirm that that prediction was entirely accurate - it has been devastating. That is not in the least surprising and in that way the judge was not significantly handicapped by not having the latest material because he did have enough material to know that any immediate sentence of imprisonment would be catastrophic for the wellbeing of two young children who were themselves victims of this sequence of events, and certainly not in any way to blame for any of it.

The judge referred to the Imposition Guideline. He was referred to the Mental Disorder Guideline but did not deal with that in his sentencing remarks at any length. He had had to handle what was obviously a tense and difficult hearing, in which he had to deal with three defendants who were each in a different situation, in a court which was obviously highly charged. He had heard from the family of the deceased who had explained how grievously they miss him. The fact that there had been a history of domestic abuse no doubt did not in any way lessen or alleviate the grief which they felt at his loss. The circumstances of this hearing were therefore difficult for the judge to manage. He clearly wanted to deliver his sentencing remarks in a concise way and he has not in any way to be criticised for that. On the contrary. It is however the case that in dealing with this appellant, whom he sentenced last, he expressed himself very concisely indeed. He dealt with the history of domestic abuse by saying:

Expanding those remarks somewhat for the purposes of explanation, we observe that the judge was referring to a decision of this Court in R v Petherick [2012] EWCA Crim 2214; [2013] 1 Cr App R(S) 116. That is a well-known decision, in which the impact of sentencing on dependent children is declared to be a highly significant factor in deciding how to sentence parents who have care of them. That principle finds its way into the Imposition Guideline which deals with the circumstances in which it may be appropriate to suspend the sentence, and we shall turn to that shortly.

When the judge said that he was applying "the same logic and for the same reasons" he was referring back to reasoning which he had used in arriving at the sentences for the other two defendants which he had previously explained. Of course, those other two defendants were in a different situation from that of this appellant and her case, in our judgment, required specific consideration applying the relevant guidelines to her position. Ms Edwards has made attractive submissions in support of this appeal to us as she no doubt did to the judge when seeking to persuade him to make a suspended sentence order of the kind which we have indicated we will now make. We are grateful to her. Mr Bide-Thomas, on behalf of the prosecution, has appeared before us today and has made the position of the prosecution clear. They accept the facts which we have set out and that this was a sentence which required those facts to be taken into account. In their Respondent's Notice, they say that in those circumstances, and in all the other circumstances of the case, it is arguable that the sentence should have been suspended. We are grateful for and applaud that fairness, which makes the task of this Court that much easier. Having said that, we are bound to say that we would have come to the same conclusion even without that assistance.

We consider that the relevant Sentencing Guidelines published by the Sentencing Council are highly material at this point and indicate strongly that this was a proper case for a suspended sentence order. Looking first at the guideline for dealing with offenders suffering from mental ill-health, we observe that the impact of the medical evidence is that this appellant did suffer significant mental health difficulties which were either caused or contributed to by the traumatic circumstances in which she had lived over many years. Paragraphs 19 and 22 of the guideline for dealing with offenders suffering from mental disorders are the relevant guidance. We will not set those out in full. But given the context of the expert reports and the content of those paragraphs, this was, in our judgment, a proper case for avoiding immediate imprisonment on the grounds of the appellant’s mental disorders.

The Imposition Guideline, which addresses directly the circumstances in which custodial sentences may or may not be suspended, points in the same direction. The latest version of it indicates that there are four factors which indicate that it may be appropriate to suspend a custodial sentence. All of these are present strongly in this case. First, there is a realistic prospect of rehabilitation in the community. Outside her relationship of domestic abuse directed at her she has never committed any offence at all. The only offence she has ever committed was the one for which she is now to be sentenced. The pre-sentence report says that in these circumstances the prospects of rehabilitation are good, particularly if she receives the help which result from the two requirements which we have indicated we will attach to the suspended sentence order in this case. Secondly, she does not present a high risk of reoffending or harm. Indeed, now that the circumstances which led to this offence cannot be repeated, there is absolutely no reason to suppose that she will ever commit another criminal offence of any kind. Next, there is strong personal mitigation. We have referred to that already when describing the mental disorders. Finally, immediate custody will result in significant harmful impact on others including any dependent children. There are two dependent children in this case whose condition we have already described.

The three factors which indicate that it may not be appropriate to suspend a custodial sentence are first, that the offender presents a risk to any person (this is absent) and thirdly, that there is a history of poor compliance with court orders and that it is unlikely that there will be compliance in the future. That is also absent. There is no reason to suppose that this appellant will not comply with the orders that we propose to make and she has never been subject to any such order in the past. In between the first and the third factor is this:

In our judgment, assisting offenders, in the context of murder investigations, will usually mean that even if the sentence can be reduced to a level such that it can be suspended, it will not be appropriate to do so. It would require an extraordinary case for the court to avoid immediate imprisonment in such circumstances for an offence which is to be equated with doing an act tending and intended to pervert the course of justice.

This is an extraordinary case and one which requires the court, and, in our judgment, required the sentencing judge as well, to conclude that notwithstanding that it was an offence of assisting someone who was on the run suspected of murder, it was not so serious that only an immediate custodial sentence was appropriate. That conclusion follows from everything that we have said about the case during the course of this judgment and it is, in our judgment, unnecessary to attempt to explain it any further.

For all of those reasons, the order that we indicated we would make at the start of this judgment will be made. The appeal is allowed. The sentence of the judge is quashed and in its place we impose a sentence of 15 months' imprisonment suspended for 12 months, with a mental health treatment requirement and rehabilitation activity requirement days as described in the pre-sentence report.

My Lord  reminds me that we should say that those requirements must be complied within 12 months. The precise terms of the requirements have been explained to the appellant by the author of the pre-sentence report and no doubt they will be explained again. She is required to have 12 one-to-one mental health treatment sessions and she is required to do the rehabilitation activity requirement days. Does either of you think we need to say anything further?

MR BIDE-THOMAS: Twenty-five rehabilitation activity days, my Lord.

THE VICE-PRESIDENT: Thank you. I did not specify that because frankly I had forgotten the number of days. I am very grateful to you for reminding me. That will appear in the order.