R v Daniel Hague

The appellant, Daniel Hague, is now aged 34. He appeals, with the leave of the Single Judge, against a sentence imposed in the Crown Court at Minshull Street, Manchester on 13 May 2025. That sentence was an extended sentence of 8½ years, comprising a custodial term of 5½ years and an extended licence period of 3 years. That was passed as the sentence on count 4, to which the appellant pleaded guilty at trial in July 2024, resulting in credit for plea of c.10%. Count 4 charged false imprisonment. The factual circumstances we shall summarise shortly.

There was a concurrent sentence of 18 months’ imprisonment on count 2, which charged the appellant with assault occasioning actual bodily harm that occurred immediately prior to and during the false imprisonment. The appellant pleaded guilty to count 2 at trial two days before his change of plea on count 4. Other counts were ordered to lie on the file and do not concern us.

In January 2024 the appellant was the leader and organiser of the violent kidnapping of a young man called Keenan Williams, in an operation to retrieve illegal drugs that had been stolen, Mr Williams being thought to be involved in the theft. The kidnapping and violence was immediately preceded by threats to the complainant that his mother, sister and young brother were to be attacked and that the appellant was going to arrange for the complainant’s older brother (who was in custody) to be “cut to bits”. The appellant and others arranged for the complainant to be tricked into going to an address from which or from the vicinity of which he was chased, captured and put into a waiting BMW X5 which drove off with the kidnapped complainant inside at 2.18 am on 24 January 2024.

The BMW was stopped by police driving north on the M6 at about 3.30 am. The appellant was in the front passenger seat, with a co-defendant driving and two further co-defendants in the rear passenger seats. The complainant was no longer in the car. The appellant had blood on his shoulder and ripped jeans. One rear seat co-defendant had bloodstaining on his trousers, the other had bloodstained hands and was in possession of a sharp pyramid ring. There was a lock-knife in the car along with a metal multi-tool and a black handled wheel brace. The complainant’s blood and the appellant’s DNA were on the wheel brace. The complainant’s blood was found in the car especially in the back of the car and also on the outside of the car. There was also over £20,000 worth of cocaine in the boot.

As part of the initial capture of the complainant, the appellant had caught up with him, grabbed him, repeatedly punched and smacked him and hit him in the face with the wheel brace, splitting his lip. Inside the BMW the appellant repeatedly asked, “Where’s the knife?”, and said he would stab the complainant. The appellant and the other two BMW passengers kept up the beating of the complainant in the car until his face was covered in blood.

The car was driven to a house belonging to the girlfriend of a friend of the complainant. The appellant and one of the co-defendants walked the complainant to the house and banged on the door which was opened. The complainant was taken upstairs and into a room where the drugs were retrieved. The appellant denied the offences when arrested and interviewed, but eventually pleaded guilty as we noted at the outset.

The appellant had 21 previous convictions for 51 offences from a first conviction for criminal damage in August 2006 when he was 14, to another criminal damage conviction in June 2022 when he was 30. Over the 16-year period in between, his convictions included Public Order Act offences, offences of theft and handling stolen goods, burglary, breaches of court orders arising from non-custodial sentences, a series of robberies in August-September 2009, when he was 17, resulting in a custodial sentence of 5 years imposed in March 2010, assaults, including an assault occasioning actual bodily harm in July 2018 when he was 26, for which he received a sentence of 30 months’ imprisonment in February 2019, and an affray in October 2018, a week before he turned 27, for which he was sentenced to 27 months’ imprisonment in September 2019.

The appellant was assessed in a pre-sentence report to be a man who used violence to achieve what he wanted, who, despite his guilty pleas, sought to minimise the nature and impact of his offences, describing what he had done as a fight in which he (the appellant) had been outnumbered, where no false imprisonment was involved and everything had been forgiven before the police intervened. He was a man who did not take responsibility for his actions and who sought to deflect blame on others, in particular the complainant. He posed a high risk of causing serious harm. He would be eligible for programs available in custody to address the risks he posed and those risks would not be capable of being managed in the community without the robust risk management that could be provided with licence conditions.

The grounds of appeal contend that the judge erred in his application of the principle of totality, took a manifestly excessive starting point, failed to give any or sufficient credit for personal mitigation, and was wrong in law to impose an extended sentence.

The judge described what had happened as a “punishment and recovery operation”, and rejected as nonsense the account that the appellant had given to probation of being outnumbered in a fight. The judge characterised the appellant as the principal ringleader responsible for much of the violence. He considered there was no evidence whatever of remorse, and there was a history of indiscriminate violence and serious offending. He took into account the personal mitigation available to the appellant, which was that he had a family including a seriously ill child and some supportive testimonials from prison staff, although those had to be balanced by a number of negative behaviour markings indicating that in the judge’s view the appellant was showing no sign of turning his back on crime and rehabilitating himself.

The judge concluded, in our view with ample justification on the material before him, that the appellant was a dangerousoffender and that the risks he presented could not be addressed by a standard determinate sentence. There is no arguable error in those conclusions and as a result there is no arguable error of law in the imposition of an extended sentence given the judge’s conclusion that the appropriate custodial term was one of 5½ years, reduced from 6 years to give credit for plea.

The only point in the appeal, therefore, is whether a custodial term of 6 years, prior to credit for plea, was in some way wrong in principle or manifestly excessive so as to not to have been the least term of custody properly commensurate with the seriousness of the offending in accordance with section 231 of the Sentencing Act 2020.

The basic facts of the false imprisonment offence placed it high in category 3B of the applicable sentencing guideline which has a sentencing range of 1 to 3 years, starting point 2 years. It was close to category 2 for harm, and all of the specific medium culpability factors were present as this was a planned offence, in which very serious violence was threatened (the stabbing) and violence was in fact used, including with a weapon (the wheel brace). Taking into account also the appellant’s role, his previous convictions and the offending being pursuant to other serious criminality, we think that the judge was fully entitled to conclude, as he did, that the offence was raised into the next category with a range of 2 to 7 years, starting point 5 years.

We do not accept the submission of Mr Smith, who presented the appeal with concision and clarity, that this involved an unjustified leap or the double counting of the actual bodily harm offence under count 2.

The judge stated that he would have passed a sentence of 4 years for count 4 on its own (the false imprisonment) and that he was increasing that by 2 years to 6 years to incorporate count 2 (the actual bodily harm). The judge rightly placed the offence under count 2 into category 2A of the applicable sentencing guideline, giving a range of 36 weeks to 2½ years, starting point 18 months, and in fact imposed, as we noted, 18 months concurrent. The articulation of the route to the term of 6 years prior to discount for plea was therefore, we consider, a little muddled. The real question, however, is whether it is a manifestly excessive expression of the overall seriousness of this offending. In our view, it is not.

The judge’s final sentence was within the sentencing category range within which he was properly entitled to fix sentence in this case and his conclusion that the correct actual sentence was one of 6 years, prior to credit for plea, might be considered stiff but was merited even allowing for the appellant’s mitigation and is not excessive. This appeal against sentence is therefore dismissed.