R v Valentin Ionut Nagy

This is an appeal against sentence brought by leave of the single judge.

On 29 May 2026, in the Crown Court at Minshull Street, Manchester, the appellant, who is now 41 years of age, was sentenced to 21 months' imprisonment for an offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, contrary to section 47 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861. He had pleaded guilty to that offence on 19 February 2026 and was afforded appropriate credit of 25 per cent for his guilty plea.

The grounds of appeal, in short, are that the custodial term was manifestly excessive and that the sentence should have been suspended. We are grateful to Miss Amy Weir for her written and oral submissions.

The complainant, Lorna Povey, met the appellant in 2020 and they entered into a relationship. They lived together at her flat. Around two and a half years later, things took a turn for the worse when the appellant began to drink heavily. It caused him to become aggressive. In late 2024 the appellant stopped going to work and began asking the complainant for money to fund his crack cocaine use. He would blame her for his misuse of drugs. She estimates that she must have given him £500 in total during the course of the relationship. She did so to stop his threatening and controlling behaviour.

That was the domestic background to the offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, which was committed on a day in March 2025. The appellant asked the complainant for money, which she declined. His response was to push her on to the bed and to begin punching her. Each time he struck her he said "You say no to me". She does not know how long the assault lasted, but she says it felt like she was punched a lot and it would not end. She felt "scared to death" and wished for the appellant to stop.

The complainant suffered extensive bruising to her back and bruising to her arms and shoulders. Her mother photographed the injuries. We have seen the photographs which show nasty, livid injuries.

The complainant's relationship with the appellant came to an end in October 2025. He came to her home asking for money and began to accuse her of having another boyfriend. He made threatening comments, which she regarding as the last straw. Two days later he came back again. He told her that he was now returning to work. To avoid any further contact, the complainant moved into her mother's address. She received a number of phone calls from the appellant soon afterwards.

The appellant was arrested and interviewed on 30 October 2025. He gave a prepared statement denying the allegation.

There was a victim personal statement from the complainant. She said that she felt she could no longer live at her home address in case the appellant showed up. Every time she heard a knock on the door she jumped at the thought that it might be him. Even going out became difficult in case she bumped into him. When she gave him money she did so out of fear of what he would do if he refused. She felt tired and drained from the experience of living with him and suffering at his hands. She had lost trust and felt unable to open up to someone ever again.

The appellant had two previous convictions for dissimilar matters. In 2016 he was fined for driving with excess alcohol and associated motoring offences. On 17 December 2025, some months after the current offence of assault, he was fined for theft from a shop.

There was a pre-sentence report. The appellant is a Romanian national. He first came to the United Kingdom in 2014. He said that he started to drink heavily when his father died in 2025. He denied any drug use. He said that the problems in the relationship started to arise because of his drinking. He gave a very different account of the circumstances of the offence. He claimed that the complainant had tried to prevent him from leaving the house, that she looked the door and took his phone off him, all of which caused him to lose his temper. He denied punching her. He said that he had only slapped her on the back with an open hand. When challenged by the author of the report about the evidence of the bruising in the photographs, he explained that he had a large hand and that slapping would have caused the bruising.

He asserted that he had been the main breadwinner and denied that he had ever requested financial support from the complainant. In the author's view, he struggled to empathise with the complainant, but did express some remorse. He said that he felt sorry for the complainant and hoped that they could re-establish their relationship.

The appellant was employed as a labourer on a construction site. He told the author of the pre-sentence report that he had stopped drinking on his arrest and was now abstinent. There were no physical or mental health problems. The author suggested that the appellant might benefit from a referral to Talking Therapies or bereavement counselling in view of the death of his father. He would also benefit from increasing his understanding of what constitutes a healthy relationship and developing a better insight into the causes of triggers of domestic abuse.

The assessment of the author of the pre-sentence report was that the appellant poses a high risk of harm to the complainant, to future partners and to the general public. There was a history of domestic abuse in police records. The report suggested that the appellant needed to evidence a period of stability in the community and address his offending behaviour problems before there could be any reduction in that risk.

The report suggested that if immediate custody could be avoided, the risk was manageable in the community with protective factors. He would benefit from one-to-one work to improve his future relationships and improve his dealing in the future with conflict situations. There could be a rehabilitation requirement and an unpaid work requirement attached to a community order.

It was common ground that the assault was a category 2A offence under the relevant Sentencing Council guideline. The starting point was therefore 18 months' custody, with a range up to two and a half years.

The judge described the background to the offending. The appellant was a habitual drug and alcohol user. He expected the complainant to pay for his drugs. Although she was on benefits, she did pay because she was frightened of him. The judge made it clear that he was not sentencing the appellant for anything other than this single assault, but the history of the relationship was informative of the harm caused on this occasion. The appellant had repeatedly punched the complainant in her own home, as a consequence of which she had moved out to live with her mother. The emotional damage caused was longstanding. The judge said that he did not take into account the previous convictions as an aggravating factor, but it meant that the appellant was not of effective good character, and so that afforded no mitigation. The domestic violence aspect was a severely aggravating feature, which raised the sentence from the starting point of 18 months' custody to 28 months.

The judge turned to the possibility of suspending the sentence. He rejected the suggestion that there was a realistic prospect of rehabilitation. That was apparent from the appellant's attitude to the offence, as described by the author of the pre-sentence report. No intervention had previously been attempted, but that was not the same, the judge said, as saying that there was a reasonable prospect of rehabilitation. The judge said that the offending was against a vulnerable woman in her own home. It was brutal and persistent. It was so serious that only an immediate custodial sentence could follow. Allowing 25 per cent credit for the guilty plea, the sentence was therefore 21 months' immediate imprisonment. The judge made a restraining order for five years.

The first ground of appeal is that the judge was wrong to make no reduction for mitigation. Miss Weir submits that four of the potential mitigating factors in the guideline were present. First, the appellant had no relevant convictions. Second, he had demonstrated that he had taken steps to address his addiction to alcohol, by achieving sobriety since the offence. Third, he had prospects of work; he had been in work for 12 years as a labourer. Fourth, he had a difficult and/or deprived background or personal circumstances. He had lost his mother in Romania at the age of 11 and had been raised by his grandmother who had also died. His father had died in 2025, shortly before the offending.

Miss Weir submits in her grounds of appeal that the judge failed to explain why the mitigating factors she identified could not reduce the sentence. She submits that in deciding not to suspend the sentence, the judge failed to conduct the required balancing exercise under the Sentencing Council imposition guideline, weighing the factors for and against suspension. She submits that the judge was wrong to conclude that there was no realistic prospect of rehabilitation in that the appellant had taken responsibility for the offence, had no relevant convictions, and was deemed manageable within the community. He had been on bail for 14 months and had committed no further offences.

Finally, in her grounds of appeal, Miss Weir submitted that an increase of 10 months to 28 months' imprisonment, before credit for the guilty plea, was simply too long and was manifestly excessive.

In her oral submission before us this morning, Miss Weir has attractively developed these points, ably answering a number of questions which the Court put to her. She emphasises the lack of relevant recent convictions, particularly the absence of any other offence for violence. She submits that this was simply too long a sentence and that the judge should have considered suspending the sentence and taken that course in view of the possibility of some more constructive approach.

We are grateful to Miss Weir for her submissions, but we are not persuaded that the length of this sentence was manifestly excessive, or that the judge was wrong not to suspend the sentence.

This was a serious offence of its kind. The physical injuries were significant, as the photographs demonstrate all too clearly. The psychological impact was also serious. It was common ground that the assault was a category 2A offence under the guideline, with a starting point of 18 months' custody. The judge did not spell out which level A factor he relied on in placing the offence in category 2A, but it must have been prolonged/persistent assault. That was how the prosecution put it in their sentencing note. In her defence sentencing note, Miss Weir had said in terms that the prosecution's categorisation was agreed. The judge did not spell out whether, in addition, he found that the complainant was vulnerable due to her circumstances, but even one high culpability factor was sufficient to place the offence into category 2A.

We do not accept that there was any double counting in adjusting the sentence upwards to 28 months to reflect the domestic violence context of the offence. That increase was fully justified. There were three aggravating factors under the Sentencing Council domestic abuse guideline: first, there was an abuse of trust or power; second, the complainant was particularly vulnerable; and third, she was forced to leave her home. If the judge took her vulnerability into account only in the uplift of 10 months, there was no double counting. Conversely, if the judge did treat her vulnerability as a level A culpability factor, there were then two level A culpability factors, which in itself would have justified going up in the category range. In that event, the balance of the 10 months' increase was amply justified by the other domestic abuse guideline aggravating factors.

As to personal mitigation, the appellant was not a first offender. Nor could he be regarded as a person of effective good character. We note that the dropdown commentary in the guideline for this mitigating factor says that where there are previous offences, but they are old, or where the offending is of a different nature, the sentence would normally be reduced to reflect that the new offence is not part of a pattern of offending, and there is therefore a lower likelihood of re-offending. The difficulty here is that it was plain from the contents of the pre-sentence report that there was a high risk of re-offending. The appellant claimed, falsely, never to have taken drugs, whereas it is clear that it was the complainant's refusal to give the appellant yet more money to pay for crack cocaine that was the trigger for the assault.

Similarly, although the appellant told the author of the pre-sentence report that he had stopped drinking, there was no evidence of his seeking any help for that; and, perhaps more importantly, he was still in denial altogether in relation to his abuse of Class A drugs.

It is true that he was still in work and that if he went to prison he would lose that employment, if only temporarily. But as the dropdown commentary in the guideline for this mitigating factor explains, it is something particularly relevant when an offender is on the cusp of custody, or where the suitability of a community order is being considered. It does not, of course, follow that the length of sentence must be reduced simply because the appellant would lose his job. The nature of his work over the years has been as a labourer in the construction industry. No doubt he has moved from job to job over that time. As we have already mentioned in reciting the facts of the offence, he had apparently given up his job previously because of his abuse of crack cocaine, only to resume it apparently some months later.

The fact that, sadly, the appellant had lost his mother at a young age, and subsequently his grandmother, and most recently his father, did not amount to the mitigating factor of a difficult or deprived background or personal circumstances. The dropdown commentary explains that such factors may be relevant to the offender's responsibility for the offence, or the effect of the sentence on the offender. In this case they could have provided no excuse or explanation for domestic violence of this kind committed by a man of the appellant's age.

We are therefore quite satisfied that the custodial term of 28 months, before credit for the guilty plea, was fully justified.

We turn to the question of whether the sentence should have been suspended. The judge did not expressly consider individually each of the factors identified in the imposition guideline. It is well established that the balancing exercise required by the guideline, weighing the factors for and against suspension, should be carried out; and even if the judge takes the view that appropriate punishment would only be achievable through immediate custody, he or she still has a discretion to suspend, if there are sufficient factors against such a course: see R v Hussain [2019] EWCA Crim 1542 at [20]. It is plain, however, that here the judge was firmly of the view that the overwhelming factor against suspension was that appropriate punishment could only be achieved by immediate custody.

The single guideline factor militating in favour of suspension which the judge expressly considered, was whether there was a realistic prospect of rehabilitation in the community. The judge rejected that because of the reservations expressed, understandably, by the author of the pre-sentence report, about the appellant minimising the offence and his lack of empathy. The fact that the report said that his risk could be managed in the community did not equate to a realistic prospect of rehabilitation in the community.

Where a sentencing judge has not clearly demonstrated in the sentencing remarks that each of the factors for and against suspension under the guideline has been separately considered and weighed, this Court may itself carry out that exercise as a cross-check.

Looking at the factors in favour of suspension, none of the other three could have been satisfied here. The appellant does present a high risk of re-offending or harm. There was no strong personal mitigation. Nor would immediate custody result in a significant harmful impact upon others, such as dependent children. Accordingly, none of the factors in favour of suspension were present.

Looking at factors against suspension, the author of the pre-sentence report was clear in his assessment that the appellant does present a serious risk. There was no history of poor compliance with court orders, so that factor did not apply. But the overwhelming factor, as the judge was entitled to find, was that the seriousness of the offence meant that appropriate punishment could only be achieved by immediate custody. Having reached that conclusion, there was no further residual feature of the case which should have impelled the judge to suspend the sentence; quite the reverse.

As this court said in R v Tharmaratnam [2017] EWCA Crim 887, at [14]:

We see nothing whatever wrong with the conclusion that the judge reached in the exercise of his discretion.

For all these reasons, we are quite satisfied that this sentence was neither manifestly excessive nor wrong in principle. Despite the attractive and valiant submissions of Miss Weir, the appeal against sentence must therefore be dismissed.