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 IN THE COURT OF APPEAL CRIMINAL DIVISION | Case No. 202500511 B2 |
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London
WC2A 2LL
Before:
LORD JUSTICE GREEN
MR JUSTICE PEPPERALL
MR JUSTICE BENNATHAN
REX
V
LEE BIRD
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Non-counsel application
.
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JUDGMENT
MR JUSTICE BENNATHAN:
On 11 October 2024 in the Crown Court at Nottingham before HHJ Ash KC, the applicant, who was then aged 49, was convicted of two offences. On 15 January 2025 in the Crown Court at Birmingham, before the same judge, the applicant was sentenced as follows: for stalking, causing fear of violence, 10 years' extended sentence, that being made up of 5 years, 6 months' custodial element, and 4 years, 6 months' extended licence. For acting in breach of a restraining order, 2 years, 6 months' imprisonment, concurrent to the other sentences. The Judge also made a restraining order.
The applicant and Laura Vardy were neighbours. There had been issues between them since 2022. In January 2024 the applicant was convicted of an offence of stalking, involving serious alarm or distress, against Miss Vardy. On 1 February 2024 he was sentenced to 26 weeks' imprisonment, and a restraining order was imposed for a period of 5 years, prohibiting him from contacting Miss Vardy directly or indirectly. He was released from custody on 29 February 2024.
The applicant considered his conviction at the magistrates' court was unfair and believed that Miss Vardy and others had conspired to lie about him. Within a week of his release, the applicant created a Facebook profile in the name of Sam Bird and used it to post a series of disturbing messages to the friends of Miss Vardy on Facebook. He also uploaded pictures of her onto his profile page. Her friends told her and she saw screenshots of the posts. Some of the images depicted the most serious violence. The applicant was arrested on 15 March 2024. A mobile phone in his possession was seized and analysed. It contained images that had been uploaded to the Sam Bird Facebook profile. There were images of Miss Vardy, of her friends and of her renovated property. The applicant refused to be interviewed by police. He later refused to be represented and declined to attend his trial, but only after he had come to court and shouted at the Judge that he would not participate but would simply appeal to this court in due course.
The Judge gave a full and careful ruling as to why the trial should continue in his absence, and as we have said, he was found guilty.
The applicant had 18 convictions for 72 offences, spanning from June 1989 to January 2024.
His relevant convictions include: an offence of threatening words or behaviour with intent to cause fear or promote violence; assault on police; assault occasioning actual bodily harm; section 20, grievous bodily harm; unlawful wounding; common assault; affray; harassment, and stalking, involving serious harm or distress.
In passing the sentence, the Judge had the advantage of having met the applicant at court, of seeing the victim give evidence and of a Pre-sentence Report that concluded, after the applicant had refused to participate in its preparation, that he was, "assessed as posing a risk of causing serious harm." A further report wrote of the applicant posing "a very high risk of serious harm".
The Judge decided the harassment offence fell into category A1, with a starting point of five years' custody, and serious aggravation, not least the breach of the restraining order and his very recent release from prison for the same type of offending. The judge, therefore, passed the sentence we have identified already, properly making the sentence concurrent as he had taken the breach into account in assessing the seriousness of the harassment offence. He found the applicant to be dangerous, a decision he justified fully and carefully in his sentencing remarks.
The applicant lodged his own grounds of appeal against sentence in which he claimed:
The probation service did not prepare a pre-sentence report. The applicant, he said, had not refused to co-operate. A report would have helped the court.
It was wrong to assess the applicant, he said, as dangerous. The court was misled and considered the applicant to be mentally ill when he was not.
The applicant had been attacked and isolated in prison and was too ill to attend court as a result.
The applicant originally sought to appeal against both his conviction and sentence. His application to appeal against his conviction required an extension of time which the Single Judge refused, and he has not renewed that application. We are dealing, therefore, with his renewed application to appeal sentence.
In refusing leave to appeal against sentence, the single judge wrote:
"There are no arguable grounds for this appeal.
You were convicted of stalking, causing fear of violence, and of breach of a restraining order arising out of the same incident. The custodial term was 5 years and 6 months. It is not arguable that this was manifestly excessive or wrong in principle. You had previously been convicted of stalking the same victim and were subject to a restraining order. You prepared a set of materials that were extremely frightening and intimidating for your victim. They included pictures of herself and strongly indicated that you intended to torture and/or kill her. You were aware that your victim did not use Facebook (because of you) and so you set up a Facebook account in a different name and sent friend's invitations to friends of the victim, in the knowledge that they would get in touch with the victim when they saw that the materials were directed at her. That way, you found a way of indirectly making contact with her and of intimidating her, causing her to fear that you would torture her, set fire to her and kill her.
The Judge was plainly right to place this offending in category A1 of the relevant sentencing guideline. The starting point for this category is 5 years, and the category range is from 3 years and 6 months to 8 years. This means that the sentence imposed by the Judge was a relatively modest increase from the starting point and was well below the top of the range. There was a very wide range of aggravating features which amply justified a move up from the starting point. These included that the offences were committed shortly after you had been released from a prison sentence for stalking the same victim, and you were on licence when the offences were committed; the material that you had prepared was very frightening indeed, and understandably made your victim fear for her life; there was careful planning on your part to find a way of making sure your victim saw the material despite the fact that she is not on Facebook; you have an appalling record, including for offences of violence; you showed no remorse; and the victim had suffered severe psychological harm and had had to move away.
It is similarly unarguable that the Judge was wrong to find you dangerous and to impose a substantial extended sentence. This was your second stalking offence, in short order, against the same victim. The two PSRs concluded that you pose a substantial risk of serious harm, particularly to your victim. You have, as I have said, a lengthy criminal record. You have shown no remorse whatsoever. You have no insight and you remain obsessed with your victim. You failed to engage with Probation at the end of your previous sentence and (contrary to what you suggest in your grounds of appeal), you failed to engage with Probation when they were preparing your Pre-sentence Reports."
We agree with all that the Single Judge said and we therefore dismiss this application.
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