R v Shaine March

We have before us two applications in relation to the sentencing of Shaine March which occurred on 31 October 2025. His Majesty's Solicitor General applies for leave under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, intending that this court should review that sentence and increase it on the grounds that it was unduly lenient. On behalf of Shaine March, Mr Patel KC applies for leave to appeal against the sentence on the grounds that it was manifestly excessive or wrong in principle. We shall deal in this judgment with both of those applications.

The sentence at the heart of them is a life sentence imposed by Mr Justice Murray, sitting at the Central Criminal Court on 31 October 2025. That sentence was imposed for the offence of murder of Alana Odysseos. A minimum term was specified by the judge of 42 years, further to section 321 of the Sentencing Act 2020. No days spent on remand prior to sentencing were ordered to count against that minimum term, which began to run on the day when it was imposed. The reason for the decision that no days spent on remand should count against this sentence will appear in more detail shortly. In essence, at the time when he committed this murder, March was already subject to a life sentence for an earlier murder. The time spent between arrest and sentencing was spent following recall under the terms of that original life sentence and accordingly do not count against the new sentence.

Alana Odysseos died at the hand of March on 22 July 2024 when she was 32 years old. She was the mother of Victoria who was born on 14 February 2022. Victoria was 2 years and 5 months at the time of the murder. Alana was also the mother of an older girl who did not at the time of the murder live with her mother. Victoria did, and she was actually present at the time when her mother was murdered. Alana was 7 or 8 weeks pregnant at the time that she died. March was the father of that child. In killing Alana, he also caused the death of the unborn child. Victoria was another direct victim of what happened. She lost her mother in circumstances which will cause her unfathomable harm in her future life.

March was born on 9 February 1978. He was 46 when he murdered Alana, 47 when he was sentenced, and is now 48 years old. The effect of the judge's order is that the Parole Board will not consider whether he can be released until after 31 October 2067, when he will be 89 years old, if he lives that long.

His Majesty's Solicitor General submits that the sentence imposed by the judge was unduly lenient because he did not properly apply the terms of Schedule 21 to the 2020 Act. Mr Little KC submits that this case demanded a whole life order and that anything less was unduly lenient. He submits that that follows ineluctably from the judge's own finding that the aggravating factors associated with this murder significantly outweighed such mitigation as was available to March. The reason why Mr Little submits, and the judge accepted, that the consideration of sentencing in this case starts with consideration of a whole life order is that, as we have said, at the time when he murdered Alana, March was subject to a life sentence for a murder committed in July 2000 when he was 22 years old.

Mr Patel KC, on his behalf, relies essentially on one ground both in opposing the application made by the Solicitor General and in advancing his own. Mr Patel has helpfully made it clear to us that the real points on which he relies relate to the mitigating factors which he says the judge was entitled to take into account in moving away from the whole life order starting point, and he goes further and says that those same factors should have resulted in a shorter minimum term than the 42 years which the judge arrived at. The mitigating factors which are identified are the state of March's mental health, including the consequences of a neuro-cognitive impairment which followed from a traumatic brain injury sustained in 1999. There are other relevant conditions as well. Mr Patel submits that applying the Sentencing Council Guideline on offenders with mental disorders, developmental disorders or neurological impairments, these various conditions should have been given more weight than they were by the judge.

Secondly, Mr Patel relies upon the fact that March entered a guilty plea to the count of murder. This plea was entered at the conclusion of the prosecution case during the trial. The defence which was being advanced during that trial was a defence of diminished responsibility. On the first day of the trial, March had pleaded guilty to manslaughter, thereby abandoning his previously-stated intention to contend that he did not have any murderous intent when he killed Alana. That is why the plea to manslaughter was entered as late as it was. He also abandoned a proposed defence of loss of control at the same time. That plea became a plea to murder during the course of the prosecution case so that it was entered at the end of it because the medical evidence available to the defence in support of the defence of diminished responsibility had changed. At the point when the plea was entered there was a consensus among all the experts that this was not a case of diminished responsibility. Notwithstanding that sequence of events, Mr Patel submits that weight should have been attached and/or was rightly attached to the guilty plea in the sentencing process.

We shall now set out the facts of the offence of murder for which that sentence was imposed. This was a distressing case, as will already have appeared from the very short summary we have given. It is necessary though to say a little more about the circumstances in which Alana came by her death. She had by that point been in a relationship with March for about four months. She had recently discovered that she was pregnant with his child. She herself had suffered serious trauma in the course of her life prior to that point. Two previous partners had died, who were the fathers of her two children, and she was desperate for a secure and stable way of life. Tragically, she came by Shaine March.

Not long after that relationship began, she began to tell her family and friends that he was coercing and controlling her. She did not use that technical term but what she described were classic signs of that condition. She said that she was not allowed to talk to people by him; that he would telephone her at all times of the day and night to find out where she was, who she was with and what she was doing; and there were video calls so that he could check where she was by looking at the background. She also said that the relationship was dogged by constant argument and that March had either destroyed or thrown away all of Victoria's toys. She admitted that she was frightened of him and said that he had assaulted her: he had smashed a glass in her face and on another occasion had cut her forehead.

All of this behaviour caused distance between herself and her family, creating a condition of isolation which allows the abuser to exercise ever more control. She did tell her sister that he had accused her of cheating on him and that he had required her to delete the telephone numbers of any male contacts from her phone. She said that the pregnancy rather than being a source of shared joy had been the cause of further arguments and tension. March thought that she should have an abortion.

Alana's sister Jasmine heard some voice notes played to her of conduct by March. He could be heard shouting and threatening to get Victoria taken away from her mother, abusing her, denying that the unborn child was his and demanding that she should have an abortion. Her family tried to persuade her to leave him, but she said that she loved him and that he had promised to go to therapy so that he would change.

During the evening of 21 July 2024, an exchange of messages on WhatsApp took place between Alana and her sister Jasmine, during which Alana was explaining that she was in pain and that he (March) did not care. She said that she could not "do this" and that she needed to think about her daughter Victoria. The exchange finished when she said to her sister in a message, "Don't want no one. Wanna be alone where I ain't hurt."

Within a few minutes of that message having been sent, March set off from his accommodation in Lewisham to travel to Alana's flat in Walthamstow (that is a small two-bedroomed flat) and he arrived there at about midnight. Arguments of the kind which had taken place frequently during this relationship began to break out again. He was suspicious of her behaviour; he was angry with her; and the fact that she was pregnant again caused the tension to increase.

Neighbours heard the argument going on. It lasted over a number of hours. They could hear him shouting the word "pregnant". Alana was saying, "I don't want to kill my baby". They moved outside, and the neighbours could hear further aggressive shouting from him, "I'm not letting you back in, I'm fed up with you, you always do this." She was crying and trying to apologise but he shouted, "Fuck off".

After a short period of calm, the neighbours heard shouting and argument begin again. One of the neighbours was worried about what might happen to her and rang the doorbell to make sure that everything was okay. Despite the noise which had so alarmed him, she at that point denied that she needed any help.

At about 3 am on 22 July, members of the public began to ring 999 for the emergency services because they had found her lying on the ground outside her flat. She was bleeding from multiple stab wounds, but she was still alive. She shouted, "Shaine stabbed me, he stabbed me" and shouted for help. March was still nearby, and she pointed him out to the neighbours who had gathered to try to help her. She said, "I can't breathe".

He walked away. He discarded the knife that he had used to stab her and took off items of clothing, throwing them away as well. He had on him at that point three mobile phones, which he disposed of (one of those had belonged to her). Not everything that he threw away was recovered. One of his mobile phones was found in a drain. That had some voice notes stored on it, timed shortly after 3 am, in which he said that he had just killed somebody and that he needed to go back to jail. One of them was addressed to his mother: "Mum I just killed a woman, and I'm going back to jail".

Tragically, Alana could not be saved despite the attendance of the ambulance service and the police who arrived quite quickly.

The police entered the flat and found Victoria inside. There were signs that the stabbing had at least begun within the flat. Blood from stab wounds was found in the kitchen and hallway. Her fingerprints were found in blood near the front door. They must have been deposited there when she was trying to flee, to get out ,and to get away from him.

March was arrested nearly two hours later. He was in a café not far away from the flat. He told the staff that he had killed his wife and child, and they saw that he was covered in blood. They made a further 999 call which resulted in the attendance of the police and March's arrest.

From that point on while he was in custody, he said a number of things. He said that he had killed her. He appears to have said that laughing during some of the observations; but he also described himself as "scum" and said that he deserved to go to jail. Later on he said that he hoped that she did not die. Later he made some comments while he was being booked into the police station suggesting that it was really all Alana's fault. He said, "All this because you wouldn't leave me alone, kept calling my phone to come to your house to fix your bed because the health visitor was coming. I wanted to leave but you hid my trainers so." He was interviewed formally under caution. He replied, "No comment".

When the forensic pathologist examined Alana's body he found 23 sharp force injuries inflicted by a knife to all parts of her upper body and to her arms and legs. He identified 19 individual stab wounds. Some of these wounds were deep, causing fatal damage to her heart, her lungs and her liver. One wound in particular deserves mention. This was a stab wound to Alana's pelvis above her reproductive organs and gestational sac. That appeared to be aimed at the part of her body where her unborn child was until that time developing. The doctor estimated the force required to inflict those wounds. He said that it was either at or approaching severe force. That is an expression used by forensic pathologists which is at the top of the scale used to describe force. ‘Severe force’ means exactly what it says.

The judge had to consider all of those facts with care, and he did so. He also had victim personal statements from Alana's family. He gave that material careful attention as well, and so have we. They are heart-rending documents to read.

The judge was required to turn his attention then to what was known about March's past prior to the point when he murdered Alana. He has a number of previous convictions. The first two are very old but have an importance because they preceded the road traffic accident in 1999 when he suffered a brain injury. They are therefore evidence about his premorbid propensities and place the effect and significance of that brain injury into an important context. In 1995 he was convicted of assaulting a police constable and criminal damage, and on a separate occasion in the same year of a further offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and criminal damage. He had been in a shop, the shopkeeper tried to eject him, whereupon he attacked and kicked the shopkeeper. He left but returned, throwing masonry through the shop window. Those convictions therefore were some evidence of a propensity to violent anger which had nothing to do with any acquired brain injury.

The most important convictions are the next two, in particular, of course, the conviction for murder dating back to the year 2000. On 19 January 2000 a 17-year-old boy, Andre Drummond, was stabbed in the neck by March who at the time was 21 years old. This took place in a public place outside the main entrance of McDonald's in Denmark Hill, Camberwell. Andre Drummond died from that injury. March denied the offence of murder, alleging that he had acted in self-defence. He was convicted. It transpired that the murder arose out of an earlier incident between a friend of March and some other associates on the one hand and another group of young men who may have been associated with Drummond. There had been an incident when March's friends were robbed of a mobile phone. They complained to him and he sought to intervene on their behalf into a sequence of events which previously had nothing to do with him. He tried to contact the people who had robbed his friends, leaving messages on a mobile phone which in fact did not belong to them and so never reached them. They constituted threats. He said: "I'm going to fucking stab you"; "I don't afraid for no knife and I'm ready to die, so let me see if you're ready to die as well." He armed himself with a knife and travelled to the McDonald's where the earlier incident had taken place. He understood, he said, that the people he hoped to confront would be armed with a knife and that is why he took it. He encountered Andre Drummond and his friends inside the restaurant at first. An incident occurred and during it Drummond was stabbed. March ran off but was later arrested and, as we have said, convicted. He was sentenced then to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 13 years. That was a minimum term calculated under the regime which had existed in those days prior to the enactment of Schedule 21 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003. He was released on a life licence on 29 January 2013.

Seven months later he committed a further criminal offence, the facts of which are of significance. He stamped on his pregnant partner's stomach and broke her television. He was arrested and pleaded guilty to battery and criminal damage. Those events caused him to be recalled to serve more of the original life sentence and he was next released on 5 February 2018. He then appears to have been living in the community without committing criminal offences, apart from coercive and controlling behaviour in relation to until the night of the murder. The murder of Alana resulted in his recall under the original life sentence, as we have said.

There was a considerable amount of evidence before the judge about the offender's mental health and about the significance and consequences of the brain injury from 1999. The experts all agreed that he had a history of offending behaviour predating that brain injury and they agreed also that he had developed an anti-social personality disorder in adulthood, characterised by a persistent pattern of offending behaviours typically of an aggressive nature. There was evidence on psychometric testing of cognitive deficits resulting from the brain injury. The significance of that was assessed by Dr Blackwood who was consulted to give his opinion on behalf of the prosecution. He concluded that the traumatic brain injury had very limited relevance to March's culpability. That principally was affected by the personality disorder which involved what he described as "elevated traits of impulsivity, irritability and aggressiveness which have underpinned significant acts of aggression towards others". There was also evidence of a more recent condition of depression which was diagnosed in 2022. That appears to have been of very limited relevance to the sentencing exercise.

The legal context in which sentence fell to be assessed was governed by the terms of sections 321 and 322 of the Sentencing Act 2020. Section 321 requires the court to make a minimum term order unless it is required to make a whole life order under section 321(3). Section 322 requires the court to have regard to the general principles set out in Schedule 21 to the Act, and it is to Schedule 21 that the court turns for detailed direction as to how to approach a sentencing exercise of this kind.

Paragraph 2 of Schedule 21 says:

Subparagraph (2) of Paragraph 2 provides a number of examples of cases which will normally fall within that category of offences which are of exceptionally high seriousness. Some of those cases specifically refer to premeditation as a relevant factor in placing them within that subparagraph. That includes, for example, cases involving murder of two or more persons, or the murder of a child.

The provision in subparagraph (2) of Paragraph 2 of the Schedule which applies to this case is that set out in subparagraph (e) "a murder by an offender previously convicted of murder". Parliament has not included any statutory condition that either or both of those murders must have been premeditated before the provision applies in any particular case.

There have been a number of decisions of this court in which different constitutions have set out the proper approach to cases where Paragraph 2 is engaged and the court is contemplating making a whole life order. Most recently, a constitution of the court presided over by the then Lord Chief Justice gave judgment in a number of cases which are usually referred to as R v Stewart and others [2022] EWCA Crim 1063; [2022] 4 WLR 86. The correct approach in such cases is set out at length in fifteen subparagraphs in [19] of that judgment. Inevitably a nuanced picture emerges.

The provisions which we would particularly highlight from that list of relevant considerations are these:

The judge at the sentencing hearing heard careful and well-formulated submissions presented to him by counsel on both sides. He took some time to reflect upon the material which had been placed before him and those submissions. He then turned to sentence March and to explain his approach. He sought to summarise in pithy language the effect of the nuanced guidance in [19] of Stewart and to apply it. He reminded himself of the statutory provisions we have already set out. He then said:

The judge then identified certain matters. He referred to the traumatic brain injury and its impact on March's cognitive ability and, as he put it, "your ability to regulate your emotions and your behaviour". The judge said that neither the 2000 murder nor the 2024 murder were premeditated. He described them as being "apparently spontaneous". He did qualify that observation by making the point that in 2000, March had travelled some distance armed with a knife before he encountered the person whom he then murdered. He had voluntarily arrived at a scene where he expected a confrontation to happen and in the hope that it would happen. The judge also observed that Alana's murder had involved prolonged and excessive violence. The judge then pointed out that there was a gap in time of 24 years between the two murders and referred to the fact that by the time he killed Alana, March had been at liberty for nearly six-and-a-half years without committing any offences. Finally, the judge referred to the guilty plea. He set out the circumstances in which that had been tendered and said that it was relevant to the decision which he was required to make. Those were the factors which caused him to decide to impose a minimum term order rather than a whole life order. He decided that the starting point for that minimum term order which he proposed to make was 30 years. All of that resulted in the starting point of 30 years.

The judge then turned to the aggravating factors. He took into account the previous conviction for murder and also the fact that the murder of Alana had caused the death of her unborn child as an additional aggravating factor. He identified in particular that this murder occurred in the context of a relationship and following conduct that was controlling or coercive and had involved the use of violence. That aggravating factor was added to Paragraph 9 of Schedule 21 by subparagraph (ba) by an amendment which came into force in February 2024, a few months before this murder. The judge then identified that there was also mental and physical suffering inflicted before death, and the fact that at the time of this attack the victim's young daughter was present, the murder involved a knife which is an extremely dangerous weapon, it was followed by the disposal of evidence including that knife but also mobile phones, and there were other previous convictions. Mitigating factors were identified by the judge; namely, the medical findings about the mental state of the offender which we have dealt with in detail above, and the lack of planning or premeditation. The judge decided in the context of assessing the minimum term order which he had decided to make that the aggravating factors he had identified very substantially outweighed that mitigation. For all of those reasons, the minimum term order received a substantial increase from 30 years to 42 years.

The provisions of Schedule 21, in our judgment, require the court to approach the question of whether a whole life order should be imposed in a particular case in a structured way. The court is first required to decide whether the case with which it is dealing involves a murder whose seriousness is "exceptionally high". That term, as has been observed in this court frequently in the past, means ‘exceptionally high’ in the context of an offence of murder. Offences of murder are always extremely serious; therefore, to attract the description ‘exceptionally high’, the murder must have some outstanding features which mean that it is far more serious than most cases of murder. Subparagraph (2) of Paragraph 2 of Schedule 21, as we have said, identifies a number of cases where that will be true. Without qualification, it identifies murders by an offender previously convicted of murder as "normally" falling within that description — ‘exceptionally high’.

Having decided that the starting point is a whole life order, the court is then required, as it is in all cases where Schedule 21 applies, to move on to consider the aggravating and mitigating factors and to decide where the balance lies. If there are substantial mitigating factors and, beyond those which have taken the case into Paragraph 2 in the first place, limited aggravating features, then it may be that, applying the guidance in Stewart, the court can avoid the whole life order, which, as Stewart says, is "likely" in cases falling within Paragraph 2. Where the aggravating factors substantially outweigh such mitigation as may be available to an offender being sentenced in these circumstances, then in our judgment courts will normally apply Schedule 21 and impose the sentence (a whole life order) which is in such cases, according to Stewart, "likely".

In this case the judge did go through the exercise in that order, but only at the point when he was deciding what minimum term order to make having already decided that he was not going to make a whole life order. Therefore the part of his sentencing remarks which justify that decision did not follow the structure which is required by Schedule 21. He identified four matters of relevance which he said meant that he ought not to impose a whole life order. In our judgment, in approaching the case in that way the judge did fall into error. We entirely agree with him that this case is clearly within Paragraph 2 of Schedule 21 and therefore the starting point is a whole life order.

The next step is to assess the aggravating factors. As the judge said in his own assessment of the balance of aggravation and mitigation, that balance is clearly weighed in favour of the aggravating factors being far more potent than the mitigation. That is principally because of the way that the offender treated Alana. The previous conviction for murder has already been taken into account by this stage in arriving at the relevant starting point. That should not be double counted. But the murder of Alana was accompanied by very serious aggravating factors. Parliament, in amending Paragraph 9 of Schedule 21 to include cases where the offender had repeatedly or continuously engaged in behaviour towards the victim that was controlling or coercive in the context of a relationship, clearly intended that factor to be given substantial weight in cases where it applies. Prior to that amendment, courts would always have taken such behaviour into account as an aggravating factor. Parliament's inclusion of it therefore specifically in the list of aggravating factors provides emphasis from Parliament in support of importance being given to it. The fact that the unborn child died is a serious aggravating factor of this case. In the ordinary case an intention to kill the victim of the crime of murder does not operate as an aggravating factor. Here there was an intention to kill not only Alana but her child. The wound aimed at the part of her body where her child was shows that clearly; what the offender said about it afterwards shows it clearly; as does the fact that the attack occurred in the context of an argument about whether she should have an abortion and, in her own words, "kill my baby". She did not want to do that so he did. It is also a serious aggravating factor that the child who survived was present during this horrific argument which culminated in the savage killing of her mother. We cannot know how much of that she was aware of; she was 2 years and 5 months old — perfectly capable of understanding what was happening to her mother, at least to the extent that it was serious, distressing and traumatic and likely to cause her very serious harm. All of that means that this was in itself a very serious case of murder.

To set against it, in our judgment, is only limited mitigation. The two things that the judge identified we should deal with specifically in that context.

First of all, the offender's mental state: we have already referred in some detail to the evidence about that, in particular the opinion of Dr Blackwood. It was not the offender's fault that he sustained a traumatic brain injury leaving him with cognitive impairment. If that had been a major cause of his behaviour it might have amounted to significant mitigation, but the evidence is that it was not. The reason he behaves as he does is because he has what the doctors describe as a personality disorder. That means he is an unusually violent and aggressive man. That hardly constitutes much in the way of mitigation.

Secondly, the judge referred to the absence of premeditation. We have made the point that Paragraph 2(2)(e) of Schedule 21 does not, unlike some of the other subparagraphs, require there to be any premeditation in respect of either of the two murders it contemplates before the second murder will fall within it when the offender comes to be sentenced. But in any event lack of premeditation in the context of both of these murders, as the judge recognised, has to be very heavily qualified when deciding how much weight it should be given. In the case of the murder of Andre Drummond, the offender travelled with a weapon to the place where he killed him. That is, in any ordinary language, some premeditation. In the case of Alana's murder, it arose out of the context of fear which he had instilled in her in dashing her hopes for a stable family life by his cruel and persistent behaviour. In the context of the night itself, the argument at the end of which he killed her had lasted over a period of hours, during which he was shouting, abusing and threatening her. It may be that the final act of killing had occurred in a rage, it may be that he had picked up the knife not long before he used it, but the absence of any prior plan to do that in the circumstances of this case operates as only a very limited mitigating factor.

The other thing which the judge identified as being relevant was the guilty plea. It is quite true that even in a case where a whole life order is under consideration, a guilty plea may operate to reduce the seriousness of the offence so that such an order can be avoided. In our judgment this is clearly not such a case. It is true that the guilty plea to murder was tendered consequent upon a change in the expert evidence which means that the proposed defence of diminished responsibility could no longer run. It is also true however that until the first day of the trial March had been contending that he was not guilty of murder by reason of lack of intent or guilty only of manslaughter by reason of loss of self-control. That plea to manslaughter was therefore long delayed. The plea to murder was entered only when he had no other alternative open to him. The point had come when he had to mount a defence in order to discharge the burden of proof which lay on him if he was to be able to reduce the crime of murder to a crime of manslaughter. He simply had no evidence to offer. In those circumstances his guilty plea should have attracted no substantial weight at all and in our judgment the judge did fall into error by giving it some weight at the point when he was deciding that a whole life order was not required.

For all of these reasons therefore, we refuse leave to appeal against sentence. We grant the Solicitor General leave to refer the sentence to this court under section 36 of the 1988 Act as unduly lenient. We conclude that for the reasons we have given the sentence was unduly lenient. We quash it and we quash the minimum term order that the judge made and substitute in its place a whole life order, which means that the offender will never be released.