R v Zakatiya Navid

This is an appeal against sentence brought by leave of the single judge. On 28 May 2025 in the Crown Court at Nottingham, the appellant, then aged 26 and of previous good character (apart from an endorsement on his driving licence for speeding in a 30-mph zone) pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving (count 1) and causing death by driving whilst uninsured (count 2).

The offences arose out of a single tragic incident which occurred when he was, in the words of the sentencing judge, an immature 23-year-old. They are both offences in respect of which disqualification from driving for a period of not less than 12 months is obligatory in the absence of special reasons. On the occasion of his guilty plea, he was made the subject of an interim disqualification order, to which we will return later in this judgment. The plea was entered in the week before the trial, which was due to begin on 2 June 2025.

The fatal accident occurred at around 10.40 pm on 17 March 2023. Driving conditions were poor. It was not only dark, but wet. The appellant was driving an Audi A3 car, without insurance, along a stretch of what the judge described as a busy city centre road which had two lanes on each side of the carriageway, but no central white line demarcation. He was driving in the outer lane and travelling at between 56 and 58 mph — almost double the 30-mph speed limit. As the judge said, if anything, the driving conditions should have led to his driving below the speed limit to make sure that he could stop if anything unforeseen happened.

The deceased, Mr Vasile Predoiu, was a 66-year-old pedestrian who was wearing dark clothing. He had started to cross the road diagonally but had paused in the middle of the road to look to his left. He had failed to use a crossing with a central pedestrian refuge which was 35m away. The prosecution case was that nevertheless, as this was a residential area, the presence of a pedestrian in the road ought to have been anticipated.

A post-mortem toxicology report revealed that Mr Predoiu was intoxicated. The level of alcohol in his system was over twice the legal limit for driving. Whilst this may provide an explanation for his decision to cross the road in that location, there is no suggestion that it had any bearing on what happened next.

The appellant, who was approaching from Mr Predoiu's right, drove straight into him, causing catastrophic injuries which sadly proved fatal upon impact. The entire incident was captured on CCTV. The appellant failed to stop after the collision and drove through a red traffic light. By then, the speed of the appellant's car had reduced to around 45 mph, but it was impossible for the experts to tell whether he had started to brake before or after the impact. On his own account, however, the appellant had completely failed to see Mr Predoiu standing in the middle of the road and initially thought that he must have collided with an inanimate object.

The appellant stopped a short distance away and pulled into a side road. He sent his passenger back to find out what had happened, and the passenger confirmed that a pedestrian had been knocked down and injured. Despite that knowledge, the appellant drove home. He took out a temporary insurance policy over the phone which he tried to backdate to cover the timing of the incident. He then left his mobile phone at home, before returning to the scene and identifying himself to police officers as the driver of the car.

A joint expert report concluded that the earliest point at which the appellant could have seen the deceased was around 175m away, and that Mr Predoiu would have been within his line of sight for a total of 7 seconds — 4.88 seconds as he crossed the road and 2.12 seconds whilst he remained stationary in the middle of the carriageway. If the appellant had been travelling within the speed limit, he would have had double the amount of time to react to the presence of Mr Predoiu had he seen him. However, it was not possible for the experts to ascertain whether the impact could have been avoided in those circumstances and, if it could not, whether it would have had less tragic consequences.

In interview, the appellant maintained that he had been insured at the time and said that he was driving within the speed limit. He suggested that Mr Predoiu had run into his car. All these lies were told in an effort to exculpate himself. The prosecution case was that he had made a conscious decision to leave the scene, make a call to an insurance company in an attempt to secure backdated insurance, and dispose of his mobile phone before he returned.

However, by the time he served his Defence Statement the appellant accepted he was driving the vehicle without insurance and that he had not seen Mr Predoiu standing in the middle of the road. He contended at that stage that the prosecution could not prove that his driving was the cause of Mr Predoiu's death, because the speed at which the vehicle was travelling was not determinative of the question whether Mr Predoiu could have been seen by a driver before the collision. Despite that potential defence, the appellant decided ultimately to plead guilty, as we have said, in the week before the trial.

On 12 August 2025 in the Crown Court at Nottingham, he was sentenced by His Honour Judge Steven Coupland to a total of 26 months' imprisonment, comprising 26 months on count 1 and 6 months concurrent on count 2. The judge treated count 1 as the lead offence, treating the absence of insurance as an aggravating factor, and passed a short concurrent sentence on count 2 to reflect totality. That approach was entirely appropriate.

The Definitive Sentencing Guideline for causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving states that where there are factors falling within more than one category of culpability, the court should weigh those factors in order to decide which category most resembles the offender's case. The starting point in category A is 2 years' custody, with a range of 1 to 4 years; and the starting point in category B is 1 year's custody, with a range of 26 weeks to 3 years. There is therefore a substantial overlap between the two categories.

The judge said that in his view the guideline put this offence somewhere as a starting point between culpability A and B. He identified a single culpability B factor, namely driving at a speed that was inappropriate for the prevailing road conditions, but he went on to say that the level of the speed and the grossly excessive speed in those conditions took the appellant's driving towards the threshold of dangerous driving. That in itself would have justified putting the culpability into category A, on the basis that the standard of driving was just below the threshold for dangerous driving and the driving included an extreme example of a culpability B factor.

Consequently a starting point of 2 years' custody was justified, before any adjustments at step 2 of the sentencing process for other factors affecting the seriousness of the offending. The judge correctly identified seven statutory aggravating factors and three statutory mitigating features. He said that he took the view that after balancing those features the offending fell into category A and above the starting point in that category, but he did not indicate how high above the starting point he was moving. Having then made a downwards adjustment — again unquantified — for personal mitigation (of which there was quite a considerable amount) he arrived at a notional sentence after trial of 33 months (2 years 9 months) before discounting for the guilty plea.

Although the judge had referred in his sentencing remarks to affording the appellant what he described as the maximum credit of 15% for a plea entered in the week before trial, in fact he discounted the notional sentence after trial of 33 months by approximately 21%, which was unduly generous. The sentence of 26 months which the judge passed was the equivalent of a notional sentence after trial of 30½ months with a 15% credit for plea.

On behalf of the appellant, Mr Mark McDonald contended that the judge should have placed the offence into category B, not category A, with a starting point of 1 year and a range of up to 3. Even if that was wrong and the judge had been entitled to take the starting point that he did and move upwards within category A, there was no justification for reaching a sentence of 33 months after balancing the aggravating and mitigating factors and before discounting for plea. In the light of the strong personal mitigation, all of which is referred to in the sentencing remarks, however the judge reached it, a notional sentence of 33 months before discount for plea was manifestly excessive. Taking too high a starting point, or elevating it too much, or not allowing sufficient discount for the mitigation, led to the sentence falling outside the range where it could have been suspended.

Had it fallen within that range, Mr McDonald submitted that it would have been wrong, in the exceptional circumstances of this case (as he described it) to impose a sentence of immediate custody, after proper application of the Guideline on the imposition of community and custodial sentences. In his oral submissions Mr McDonald specifically drew attention to the views of the author of the pre-sentence report, who had indicated that because of the appellant's mental health issues and vulnerability in a custodial environment he was likely to struggle, and had recommended that the appropriate sentence should be either a suspended sentence with community requirements, or a community-based disposal, notwithstanding that this was a case involving loss of life.

Mr McDonald has also told the court this morning how well the appellant has done whilst he has been in custody. He has completed the offender management course and undertaken courses in engineering and plastering. Almost from the onset of his incarceration he has been a trusted prisoner and he has behaved himself impeccably. His progress in custody is to be commended. It is obviously something that the court would have expected of a young man of previous good character who has got himself into trouble in this manner through a moment or two of careless driving which verged upon recklessness in the conditions in which he found himself.

On behalf of the Crown, Ms Rose in her helpful Respondent's Notice submitted that the sentence of 26 months was not manifestly excessive. The judge was right to initially place the offending where he did, and he was entitled to conclude that it should be elevated into category A for the reasons that he gave. He then had to take into account other aggravating features, including the appellant's actions in the immediate aftermath of the collision, continuing to drive above the speed limit through a red light, the deliberate attempts to deceive the police with regard to the insurance cover, the absence of insurance, the fact there was a passenger in the vehicle, and the fact that the deceased was a vulnerable pedestrian whom the appellant had initially sought to blame for the collision. In the light of all the factors that the judge identified, some of which were extreme examples of their type, there was ample justification for elevating the sentence significantly from the starting point in category A. Ms Rose also pointed out, by reference to the overlap between the two categories, that 3 years is at the top of the range for the most serious example of a category B offence.

Ms Rose also submitted that the judge fully took into account all the mitigation advanced on the appellant's behalf, and referred to it expressly in his sentencing remarks. She pointed out that the impact of the incident on the appellant's mental health, which was the subject of a report by his treating psychotherapist, was counterbalanced to some extent by the fact that in 2020 the appellant had himself been involved in a traffic collision which endangered his own life, and yet he had failed to regulate or moderate his driving afterwards. This too was a factor which the judge took into account.

In her oral submissions this morning, however, Ms Rose very fairly accepted that the judge had not explained how it was that he reached the notional sentence after trial of 33 months and that it would be difficult for the Crown to support an elevation of the sentence towards the top end of category A, which would perhaps have been necessary in order to reach a sentence of that length were all the personal mitigation to be taken into account. Ms Rose also accepted that it would have been possible for the judge, on weighing the factors aggravating the seriousness of the offending against all the mitigating factors, including the personal mitigation, to have reached a sentence which was closer in length to the starting point in category A.

Before addressing counsel's submissions, we wish to associate ourselves with the judge's remarks expressing condolences to the victim's family, who were seriously affected by his loss both emotionally and financially. As the judge said, no sentence that he could pass could begin to reflect all that they have lost in consequence of the appellant's driving.

In our judgment the judge was entitled to place the appellant's culpability into category A and to move upwards from the starting point in that category to reflect the aggravating features. However, in order to reach a notional sentence after trial of 33 months, he would have had to have increased the 2-year starting point almost to the top of the range for a category A offence in order to take proper account of all the mitigation to which he was referred. We consider that such an increase would not have been justified in principle on the facts of this case. Of course we bear in mind the fact that the sentence that the judge imposed was the equivalent of a lower notional sentence after trial before the appropriate discount for plea.

Whilst we must not lose sight of the fact that the issue for us is whether 26 months was manifestly excessive, the fact remains that the judge identified a notional sentence after trial of 33 months, and on any view that was too long. Since the judge did not reach a notional sentence after trial of 30½ months, and we have no explanation as to how that figure might have been calculated, we have to consider for ourselves whether that notional sentence could be justified on these facts so that the ultimate sentence passed by the judge, albeit apparently in consequence of an error in calculation, was within an appropriate range and we should not interfere with it.

We have reached the conclusion that, whilst a sentencer could probably have justified an increase from the starting point within category A to around 3 years, and the judge was entitled to conclude that the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating factors, a downward adjustment of that sentence by only around 6 months for the extensive personal mitigation would have been inadequate.

In our judgment, after weighing all the aggravating and mitigating factors that the judge rightly identified, the notional sentence after trial should have been in the region of 26 months, which after an appropriate discount of 15%, rounded down, would reduce the sentence to one of 22 months. To that extent we allow this appeal.

We are not bound by the judge's views regarding the issue of suspension of the sentence, but we do agree with him that despite the strong personal mitigation, including the appellant's age and immaturity at the time of the offending, the realistic prospects of rehabilitation, the lack of any significant risk of reoffending and the absence of any pattern of non-compliance with court orders, coupled with what we now believe to be compelling evidence of his exemplary behaviour within prison, this offence was so serious that the appropriate punishment for it could only be achieved by immediate custody. That is not only because driving at that speed in those conditions fell just short of dangerous driving — the author of the pre-sentence report aptly described it as “reckless” — but because of the appellant's actions, in panic, in the immediate aftermath of the accident and his pursuit of his own self-interest in callous disregard of the devastating impact of his actions.

Since we are allowing the appeal to the extent of reducing the custodial term to one of 22 months, the period of disqualification on each count needs to be adjusted and pronounced in accordance with the guidance given by this court in R v Needham & Ors [2016] EWCA Crim 455. Bearing in mind the need for protection of the public and the other purposes of sentencing, including the need for the rehabilitation of the appellant who (as a relatively young man) may well need to use a car in future for the purposes of employment, the discretionary period of disqualification in this case is one of 2 years. We agree with the judge that this is an appropriate period, bearing in mind both the fact that at the time of the offending the appellant had not been deterred from speeding by his past experiences, and the fact that he has not driven since the accident because of the traumatic impact it had upon him. The extension period under section 35A of the Road Traffic Offenders Act is one-half of the custodial term, namely 11 months. The total period of disqualification is therefore 2 years and 11 months. The requirement to pass an extended retest imposed by the judge is unaltered. For the avoidance of doubt, the disqualification is imposed in respect of both the offences (counts 1 and count 2) and is to run concurrently.

Since by virtue of section 26(12) of the 1988 Act any period of disqualification is automatically reduced by any period of interim disqualification, the judge was wrong to state that the period of disqualification should run from the imposition of the interim disqualification he imposed. The period ran from the date on which sentence was pronounced. We direct that the Crown Court record be amended to remove the reference to the “interim disqualification”, as well as to reflect the adjustment to the period of disqualification necessitated by the reduction in sentence and the recalculation pronounced today.