R v Nina Manley

This is an application by His Majesty's Solicitor General for leave to refer a sentence to this court under the provisions of section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 for review on the grounds that it is unduly lenient. The Solicitor General submits that having so found, this court should increase it. We have been assisted by submissions of conspicuous ability by Ms White on behalf of the Solicitor General and Mr Arif on behalf of the Offender. Mr Arif appeared for the Offender in the Crown Court and has conducted her response to this application before us this morning.

The Offender is now 51 years old. On 18 August 2025, in the magistrates' court, she pleaded guilty to an offence of threatening to kill, contrary to section 16 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 (charge 1), and three offences of possession of a bladed article in a public place, contrary to section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (charges 2-4). She was committed to the Crown Court for sentence. Having pleaded at that point she was entitled to, and in due course received, full credit against the sentence for the plea.

Sentencing occurred in the Crown Court at Taunton on 19 September 2025. An inconsequential error was made in respect of the level of credit which should have been afforded in respect of some concurrent sentences. That error was corrected under the slip rule on 30 September 2025. The end result was a suspended sentence order with a custodial element of 12 months' imprisonment suspended for 2 years with requirements including a 9-month alcohol treatment requirement and up to 35 rehabilitation activity requirement days. This was imposed in respect of the first charge with concurrent terms of 3 months imprisonment, suspended on the same terms, for charges 2, 3 and 4.

The sentencing judge, Mr Recorder Cannings, considered, as he was obliged to do, the relevant guidelines for the specific offences. The Sentencing Council has issued a guideline for the offence contrary to section 16 of the 1861 Act and another guideline for the offence contrary to section 139 of the 1988 Act. The maximum penalty for the first charge (threatening to kill) is 10 years. The maximum penalty for possession of a bladed article in a public place is 4 years' imprisonment.

The facts of the case require particular consideration. On 16 August 2025 the Offender travelled by taxi to a Premier Inn in Bridgewater. She had with her three knives which she later said she had sharpened before making that journey. She intended to use those knives to kill or seriously injure illegal immigrants whom she wrongly thought were accommodated at the hotel to which she went. On the journey she asked the taxi driver to stop at a Tesco Express shop, and there she said to a member of staff that she had knives with her and she was going to kill somebody. She said that he should make a note of her name because she was going to be famous.

In fact there are no immigrants or asylum seekers accommodated at the Premier Inn; they were at the material time to be found at the Holiday Inn. In her drunken stupor the Offender had failed to identify the right hotel. She had nevertheless formed the intention which we have identified. That was clear from what she said to the taxi driver. It was also clear from what she said to the member of staff at Tesco's to whom she spoke in a very disinhibited way about precisely what she planned to do when she got to the hotel. He fortunately called the police. They found her before she was able to do anything with her knives, perhaps because she had gone to the wrong hotel. What might have happened if she had gone to the right hotel cannot be known. It is however of importance to record that she had, in furtherance of her plan, booked a room at the hotel, from which it might be inferred that she planned to stay the night. That might give her access to other residents of the hotel when they might be gathered together the following morning having breakfast. It may be that she had calculated that that would be the optimum moment for her to use her knives in order to kill or maim as many people as she could.

The court has experience of incidents where knives have been used in this way in order to cause death. Commonly enough those sorts of incidents result in charges of murder, attempted murder or offences contrary to the Terrorism Acts. In this case the conduct was charged, as we have said, by means of three charges of possession of bladed articles and the offence of threatening to kill. The charge of threatening to kill related to things said to the member of staff at Tesco's. He of course was not in fear that he was going to be killed because what she said was, "I have knives, I'm going to kill someone." Again, when the police arrived at the hotel to which she was taken she said, "Thankfully I was here" – by which she meant the hotel to which she had been taken – "and there was no illegal immigrants. I came here with a bag of knives to not hurt children and women but the men. I come from a military background. You are absolutely right doing this" – by which she meant arresting her. "I would of. I think I just paid for a really expensive room but that’s all right. No, I am pissed. You can look at my posts; I am going to hurt somebody." That was a reference to posts which she had made on social media expressing her profound antipathy to illegal immigrants.

She said as she was in the police car being taken away, "I spent so much money to get here, and it wasn't even an immigrants’ hotel. Fuck sake, I would of even killed the security people, whoever I could get my hands on. Then we can kill the Prime Minister. I've got no problem with other races; it’s just got too much. We had all these Polish and Romania women raping our women and children. I don't fucking care; those knives were going to be used. I sharpened them for the reason that I want to fucking hurt someone, kill them" and so on.

In interview she claimed to have only limited memory of the detail of what she had been doing, but she accepted that she had taken knives with her to the hotel. By that stage she was saying that she did not know whether she would have hurt anybody. She said that her intention was "to go to the hotel to confront them [the asylum seekers] and to get clarity". In the event she was charged with the offences we have identified. She pleaded guilty and received the sentence we have described.

The Solicitor General submits that the judge fell into error by mischaracterising the level of harm involved in relation to the bladed article offences. The Solicitor General says that the offences clearly fell into category 1 for harm which means that the correct starting point before consideration of aggravating and mitigating features was 18 months' imprisonment for a single offence. She then submits that the judge failed to appreciate that the aggravating features in this case required a significant increase above whatever the starting point was in order to reflect the racially aggravated element of this offending. Although she said to the police, as we have recorded, that she was not hostile to anyone on the ground of their race, she was in fact targeting people who had come to this country illegally in order to claim asylum who were predominantly therefore not ethnic white English citizens. That was her motivation.

The Solicitor General also observes that the sentencing judge took into account her mental disorder twice: first in assessing the level of culpability under the guideline for the relevant offences; but also secondly, and later in the process, by taking it into account as a mitigating factor. The Solicitor General also submits that leaving aside any question of double counting, the mental disorder was given excessive weight because the evidence was that the Offender suffers from a personality disorder, seriously aggravated in its impact upon her by her previous prodigious and repeated consumption of alcohol. It was alcohol consumption which was the principal motivating factor in this offence rather than any underlying mental disorder. It is true that she has suffered from depression and anxiety over the years and it is also true that she suffered an upbringing when she was a child which is described in detail in the pre-sentence report which was truly appalling. She was herself as a child at that stage a victim of mistreatment, and that has no doubt sounded down the years in a way which has made her into the person she is. She is however now 51 years old and has herself contributed to her current state by the alcoholism which we have described. The Solicitor General says that by balancing all of those things in the way that he did and coming to the conclusion that he did, the sentencing judge made a clear error.

Finally, the Solicitor General says that the result of an appropriate sentencing process would have been a sentence of more than 2 years, in which event no question of suspending it could have arisen. If that is wrong, the Solicitor General says that even if the sentence had been 2 years or less, it should plainly not have been suspended because the seriousness of the offending was such that only an immediate custodial sentence could properly have been imposed. That is a reference to the Imposition Guideline to which the judge of course referred. The judge made no specific reference to the guideline for dealing with offenders suffering from mental disorder but he plainly had its terms in mind.

It is right at this stage to refer to the previous convictions of this Offender, which are, in our judgment, highly significant. She has eight previous convictions. The most relevant is a set of convictions from 7 August 2023: for assaulting an emergency worker (we believe a police officer) and for two offences of racially aggravated intentional harassment, causing alarm and distress, contrary to section 4A of the Public Order Act. She did not receive a custodial sentence, but the appearance before the court on that occasion and the consequent sentence did nothing whatever to deter her from the behaviour which brought her before the Taunton Crown Court for sentence in August 2025. The conviction for racially aggravated offending as recently as 2023 was, in our judgment, a highly significant factor to be borne in mind in determining what the appropriate disposal was for offending which had similar characteristics but the additional and very serious aggravating factor of carrying weapons with the intention of using them.

The court is required to follow the guidelines by statute. The guideline for possession of bladed articles has three levels of culpability. Culpability A involves cases where there is possession of a bladed article or some other highly dangerous weapon and also cases where the offence is motivated by or demonstrates hostility based on the presumed characteristics of the victim, in particular involving religion, race, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity. In this case the Offender had three weapons (all bladed articles) and was intending to use them against people who had been identified on the basis of their race and perhaps religion. Clearly culpability A is engaged.

So far as harm is concerned, this offence of course is of possession of a weapon, not of using it, and the harm characteristics are identified in the guideline with that factor very much in mind. This means that possession of a weapon at a school or other place where vulnerable people are likely to be present or in a prison or in circumstances where there is a risk of serious disorder or where serious alarm or distress are caused are in category 1; all other cases are in category 2.

Category 1A has a starting point of 18 months' custody and a range from 1-year to 2 years and 6 months. The maximum penalty is 4 years' imprisonment.

We observe that so far as the guideline is concerned, in assessing culpability and harm at step 1, the fact that the Offender intends to use the bladed articles imminently in order to cause death or serious injury is not identified as being relevant. That does not however mean that it is irrelevant.

The same point may be made in relation to the other offence specific guideline which the court was required to take into account for the offence of threatening to kill. Again, there are three culpability categories:

Harm is assessed also in three categories. Category 1 involves very serious distress caused to the victim, significant psychological harm caused to the victim, and where the offence has a considerable practical impact on the victim. Mr Arif submits that this guideline focuses on the person who hears the threat as the victim, rather than the person who will be killed if the threat is carried out.

Again, the fact that the person issuing the threat not only intends that the person hearing it will believe that it is to be carried out (which is an element of the offence) but also and separately actually intends to kill somebody soon is not identified as a relevant factor for the purposes of sentencing in this guideline. Plainly it is a relevant factor for the purposes of sentencing.

Category 1A attracts a sentence within a range of 2 to 7 years and suggests a starting point of 4 years. The other classifications available under the guideline involve various lower starting points and lesser sentencing ranges.

We have at the start of this judgment sufficiently identified the basis upon which the Solicitor General criticises the judge's sentence. It is a submission that there was a mischaracterisation for guideline purposes, double counting of the mental disorder element, and the failure to appreciate that the seriousness of the offence together with the previous conviction as an aggravating factor required immediate custody.

Mr Arif on behalf of the Offender has persuasively submitted that the judge applied the relevant guidelines as he was required by statute to do. Having done so, he arrived at a sentence level, after giving full credit for the plea of guilty, at which a suspended sentence order was available. The judge then considered, says Mr Arif, the Imposition Guideline and must have considered the Mental Disorders Guideline, and reached the conclusion, as he was entitled to do, that the sentence of imprisonment which was inevitable could properly be suspended.

We have some sympathy with the sentencing judge, who was required to apply the sentencing guidelines for the offences which had been charged in this case. Those guidelines, as we have said, do not deal with the fact that a case may involve possession of lethal weapons and threats to kill in circumstances where it is plain that unless prevented from doing so the offender intends very shortly to kill people. That may or may not be a feature of the guidelines which may or may not require attention in due course. That will be a matter for the Sentencing Council. Nothing in the guidelines as presently expressed requires sentencers to ignore this very obviously relevant aggravating factor.

We observe that in the 1861 Act, Parliament decided that a maximum sentence of 10 years should be available to the courts for offences of threatening to kill. In this case, in his proper concern to apply the guidelines the judge may have failed to stand back and look at what this Offender had actually done and what she intended to do if she were not stopped. This was a case which was, in terms of the conduct to which she pleaded guilty, very close to being an offence of terrorism. It was also very close to an offence of attempted murder. If two people had done what she did alone together, they may well both have been guilty of conspiracy to murder. It is of course important always for a sentencing judge to follow the guidelines because that is the statutory duty. That extends to identifying the starting point in the guideline which most closely relates to the conduct of the offender who is being sentenced. Having identified that starting point, the judge's job then is to identify aggravating and mitigating factors in order to arrive at a proportionate sentence and which affords, in cases of this kind, an element of public protection.

Threatening to kill is a specified offence. We are not suggesting that the judge ought in this case to have found that this Offender is dangerous, but she clearly does pose a risk. That is evident from her conduct on the occasion with which we are dealing and also from her history. She appears to be obsessed with social media and other content dealing with the threat which she believes is posed to this country by unlawful immigration. As a result of that exposure, she has embarked upon the course which has brought her before this court.

In our judgment the judge did fail to categorise the case appropriately under the guidelines. The bladed article offences clearly were category 1A offences with a starting point of 18 months' custody. From the point of view of the guideline for threatening to kill, the position is perhaps a little less clear. This was however, wherever the starting point is to be found, a very serious offence of threatening to kill for the reasons we have explained. In our judgment the appropriate outcome in this case was a sentence of immediate imprisonment; no other course was properly open to the judge.

In assessing the length of that term of imprisonment the judge was plainly obliged to consider the circumstances of the Offender herself, which are sad and not entirely her fault. We have referred earlier to the circumstances of her upbringing, to her personality disorder and to the mental illnesses from which she suffers from time to time. In all of those circumstances, and making a generous allowance for this mitigation, we consider that the lowest sentence which could properly have been imposed on this Offender was a sentence, before discount for guilty plea, of 3 years' imprisonment in relation to the first charge. That is designed to reflect the possession of the three knives which is closely incorporated in the threats to kill. Concurrent sentences in the term imposed by the judge will remain in respect of those three offences, because their length is immaterial. If they stood alone a substantially longer term would be appropriate. That makes a total term of 3 years' imprisonment before the credit for the plea. We regard that as a merciful outcome, given the seriousness of this offending.

The credit for the plea should be in the full amount of one-third to reduce that term to 2 years' imprisonment. Having regard to the Imposition Guideline and to all that we have said about this offending, it is clear to us that appropriate punishment can only be achieved by that sentence being ordered to be served immediately.

Accordingly, we quash the sentences imposed by the judge and impose in their place a sentence in respect of the first charge of 2 years' imprisonment, with concurrent terms of 3 months as imposed by the judge in respect of the second, third and fourth charges. The other orders made by the judge stand. To that extent this application, first of all is granted leave, and secondly, succeeds.