R v Owen Richard Blades

On 3 January 2025, in the Crown Court at Lincoln, the appellant (then aged 27) pleaded guilty to offences of murder (count 1), wounding with intent (count 2), having an offensive weapon (count 3), burglary (count 4) and theft (count 5).

On 15 May 2025, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, with a minimum period to serve of 34 years and 195 days. He was given concurrent sentences for the other offences. For wounding with intent, the sentence was one of six years and nine months' imprisonment; for having an offensive weapon, two years and three months' imprisonment; for burglary, two years' imprisonment; and for theft, two months' imprisonment.

The appellant now appeals, with the leave of the single judge, against the minimum term imposed for murder.

While preparing the case, the Registrar of Criminal Appeals noted that the theft offence had been improperly dealt with in the Crown Court. It was included on the indictment as count 5. However, there was no power to add it to the indictment because it was a low value offence of shoplifting. The correct procedure would have been for the offence not to be included in the indictment, and then to have been put to the appellant once he admitted the properly indicted offences. The way in which it was dealt with means that the guilty plea to theft was a nullity and we quash it. Having indicated that this was our intention, the prosecution have offered no evidence and a not guilty verdict will be entered on the theft charge.

The appellant was released from prison on 11 June 2024. He spent the morning of 12 June in Gainsborough and was then driven by his mother to Scunthorpe, where he purchased a brown handled lock-knife with a five and a half inch blade. Thereafter, he went to the flat of a man with whom he had been recently incarcerated, named Marc Glasscoe, who lived in Lincoln. Another person present at the flat while he was there, Joshua Corey, noted that the appellant was now in possession of a number of knives and a gas gun. While at the flat the appellant and the others there took cocaine and drank alcohol.

On 13 June the appellant, along with Joshua Corey, went to Tesco Express and stole food. That is the offence of theft which has now been discontinued.

After that, the appellant went to Merkur Slots on Lincoln High Street. An employee at those premises noted that the appellant was drinking alcohol, which was prohibited. He politely asked the appellant to desist, whereupon the appellant became aggressive and said that anyone who contacted the police about his drinking would leave the shop in a body bag. When the employee moved towards the telephone, the appellant followed him and threatened to put him in a coffin should he dial 999. He then pulled out a knife. When the employee tried to get away, he was followed by the appellant who then stabbed him in the abdomen. The victim escaped to a nearby shop, where the police and paramedics were called. He was taken to a hospital in Nottingham where his wound was sealed with sutures and he was admitted to the trauma ward overnight for observations. That is the offence of wounding with intent.

Meanwhile, the appellant walked away from the shop along High Street. He concealed his appearance by covering his face. He was still carrying the knife. While he was walking along High Street he passed two other men who saw the knife and tried to move out of the appellant's path. The appellant told those men that he would not use the knife on them.

He went to 99 Portland Street, the home of James Milson, who was at that time in a hospice. He broke a pane of glass in the front door, entered the house and stole from inside. This was the burglary to which the appellant pleaded guilty.

Shortly after that, he went down the street to 73 Portland Street. That was the home address of John Connolly, a man then aged 69. He arrived there at approximately 11.15 am. There were no signs of a forced entry to that house, meaning that Mr Connolly must have opened the door to him. Once inside, the appellant attacked Mr Connolly. It was a sustained attack with a knife. The distribution of blood inside the house indicates that the attack must have begun as soon as Mr Connolly opened the front door. It is equally clear from the blood distribution evidence that Mr Connolly moved while bleeding out of the hallway to an armchair in the sitting room. The attack continued while Mr Connolly was sat there, and it was in that chair that his body was discovered several days later. He had been struck with the knife at least 18 times to the head, face and neck. There were also defensive injuries to his arms and hand. He died as a result of that attack. The evidence suggests that the appellant then remained in Mr Connolly's house for approximately three and a half hours. The appellant's bloody footprints were found around the house, including in the bedroom and the bathroom.

Once he left Mr Connolly's home, the appellant met up with two of his friends. He told them that he had stabbed someone and had stolen from him. One of those people, Jennifer McIntyre, sent several messages to her friends, telling them that she was frightened of the appellant because of what he had told her and the fact that he still had a knife in his possession.

The police arrested the appellant in the early evening that day at the address where he was visiting friends. At the time of arrest, the police were investigating the stabbing of the employee at Merkur Slots and knew nothing of the murder which had occurred nearby.

Mr Connolly's body was not found by his two sisters until 18 June. A folding knife with bloodstaining on it was found in the bedroom of his home.

In addition, at the time of the appellant's arrest, the police found a Stanley knife, a blue snap knife, a gas gun and two black handled serrated knives in the appellant's property.

The judge had impact statements from the sisters who found Mr Connolly's body. The trauma of finding their brother's body in the state it was then in has been great. One of them has had to undergo therapy as a result. They describe their brother as a kind and caring man who will obviously be missed.

The appellant has eight previous convictions for 41 offences. His relevant convictions included five offences of battery committed between 2013 and 2016; two offences of theft in 2013; a racially aggravated common assault in 2015; two offences of assault occasioning actual bodily harm in 2016 and 2024; and an offence of wounding with intent in 2016. His offending included incidents in which he had punched his girlfriend to the eye while holding a pair of scissors; attacking his partner with a hammer and an axe; and holding a knife against a victim's throat so as to cause a cut.

The judge had access to two psychiatric reports on the appellant, both prepared by Dr Appleyard. Dr Appleyard concluded that the appellant does not have a major affective or psychotic disorder. He does have an autism spectrum condition. That condition, Dr Appleyard concluded, would not have impaired the appellant's ability to understand the nature and quality of his acts, form a rational judgment or exercise self-control. He also concluded that the appellant has a long history of polysubstance misuse, including alcohol, cannabis, amphetamine, crack cocaine, cocaine, heroin and prescription drugs. The doctor formed the view that the appellant had a mental and behavioural disorder due to dependency on multiple drugs and psychoactive substances. The doctor concluded that the appellant was fit to plead, did not have available to him a partial defence of diminished responsibility, and was not in need of a hospital order should the appellant be convicted only of offences which permitted of such a sentencing option.

In passing sentence, the judge began by indicating the appropriate sentences for all matters excluding the murder. In particular, he determined that the offence of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm fell into category A3 of the relevant Sentencing Council definitive guideline: category A because of the use of a highly dangerous weapon; category 3 harm because the injury inflicted was not life-threatening or grave by the standards of offences of this type. The starting point for sentence was five years' imprisonment. The aggravating factors he identified as: the previous convictions; the fact that the appellant was on licence at the time the offence was committed; the offence was committed against someone working in a shop and therefore providing a service to the public; others being present in the shop at the time at which the stabbing occurred; and the appellant's intoxication.

The only mitigating feature identified by the judge was the appellant's mental health difficulties.

The judge moved up from the starting point to a sentence of seven years and six months' imprisonment, before giving the appellant credit of one tenth for a guilty plea entered on the day of trial, thus reducing the sentence to one of six years and nine months' imprisonment.

The judge then considered the minimum term for the offence of murder. The prosecution contended that this must have been a murder carried out for gain. They asked rhetorically: why else would the appellant have gone to that house where he did not know the occupant and killed the occupant, as he did? The judge considered this submission but rejected it. He concluded that there was insufficient evidence to justify him sentencing on that basis. Therefore, using Schedule 21 to the Sentencing Code, he decided that the appropriate starting point was 25 years to reflect the fact that the appellant had taken a knife to the scene of the murder in order to use it in the course of an attack.

The judge identified the same aggravating features in relation to the murder as he had identified in relation to the offence of wounding with intent. Additionally, he concluded that there was a significant degree of planning or premeditation by the appellant in that he bought the knife on the day before that on which the offence occurred, carried it around with him, and then targeted this house. The judge also treated the fact that Mr Connolly was a vulnerable man in his own home at the time of the attack as an additional aggravating feature. Finally, he recorded that this was a sustained and excessive attack which involved at least 18 blows with a knife.

Again, the judge noted the sole mitigating factor as being the mental health difficulties identified by Dr Appleyard. He concluded that the aggravating factors vastly outweighed the mitigating features. He concluded that the appropriate minimum term for the murder alone would have been one of 34 years. He afforded the appellant five per cent credit for a guilty plea entered on the day of trial.

The defence submitted that the judge should have afforded the appellant greater credit, given that the appellant did not receive the report from Dr Appleyard indicating that the partial defence of diminished responsibility was not available to him until 20 December 2024.

Those submissions were rejected by the judge for three reasons. First, that the appellant had told people shortly after he committed the murder that he had killed someone and was therefore aware of what he had done. There was no need to await a psychiatric report before accepting his involvement in the killing. Second, the appellant had not indicated at any stage, as was open to him to do, that he accepted that the evidence established that he (the appellant) was responsible for Mr Connolly's death and was merely awaiting a psychiatric report to see whether a partial defence was available to him. Third, that the appellant had delayed in making contact with his lawyers after he received the report to indicate that he wished to change his plea. He could have made contact with them in time to avoid final preparations for trial having to be made. The judge therefore said that he would have fixed the minimum term at 32 years and three months for the murder alone.

The minimum term, however, had to reflect the totality of the appellant's offending. Recognising this, the judge moved to 35 years to reflect the whole of the appellant’s criminality. He then deducted the 170 days which the appellant had spent on remand, which resulted in a minimum term of 34 years and 195 days.

The grounds of appeal are that the judge erred by moving up from the starting point of 25 years to 35 years, before applying discount for the guilty plea; that insufficient credit was given for the appellant's guilty plea; and that therefore the sentence was manifestly excessive.

The minimum term imposed on the appellant was undoubtedly severe. However, the circumstances of the offending were sufficiently serious to merit it. The appellant armed himself with more than one knife very shortly after his release from custody. There was no legitimate reason for him to have possessed any of those weapons. Having sourced them, he then used them solely to inflict serious injury and death. This of itself merits a significant uplift from the starting point – a starting point which would have applied equally to someone who had armed himself with a single such weapon in anger at the last moment.

The severity and circumstances of the murderous attack were similarly unusual. The appellant stabbed an older and defenceless man in his own home 18 times. The offence was motiveless. Further, and importantly, the minimum term had to reflect the totality of the appellant's offending. Most significantly, it had to reflect the seriousness of an attack on a worker going about his business and doing no more than gently trying to enforce a drinking ban on his premises. Thankfully, the effects of his injuries were not long-lasting. But a stab to the abdomen could have resulted in catastrophic damage.

Finally – and again significantly – the length of the minimum term had to take into account the appellant's criminal history and the fact that he had only recently been released on licence from a prison sentence for an offence of violence. As previously recorded, the criminal history of the appellant was lengthy and highly relevant to sentence.

We have of course considered the psychiatric evidence as providing the sole mitigating feature to this case. Having considered it, we are sure that it could not have carried much weight. Dr Appleyard was clear in his conclusions that the appellant's psychiatric condition did not affect such things as his powers of self-control or his ability to understand what he was doing. This is far from being a case in which the medical evidence falls just short of providing the appellant with a partial defence. Rather, it leads to the inevitable inference that the offending and the medical condition are practically unrelated.

We turn to the second ground of appeal. We do not accept the argument that the appellant should have received greater credit for his guilty plea than he was afforded. He was entitled to await the preparation of the psychiatric report before concluding that the partial defence of diminished responsibility was not open to him. However, until he was in receipt of that report, the appellant chose not to accept that he was responsible for the killing at all. In his Defence Statement he put the prosecution to proof of that fact. It would have been open to him to have served a Defence Statement in which he indicated that he accepted that he was guilty of killing Mr Connolly and was simply awaiting the receipt of medical evidence to determine whether he was guilty of murder, or was to offer a plea to manslaughter by way of diminished responsibility. His refusal to accept any responsibility for the killing until the last moment justified the judge affording him no more than five per cent credit for the guilty plea when it was entered.

It follows that, save for declaring the theft to be a nullity, we dismiss this appeal against sentence.