R v Mason Knight

The appellant, Mason Knight, is now aged 25. The offences with which we are concerned were committed a few weeks before his 24th birthday.

The appellant appeals with the leave of the Single Judge against an extended sentence of 19 years with custodial term of 14 years and 5-year extended licence period.

The sole ground of appeal is that the custodial term was manifestly excessive. It is not suggested that HHJ Rafferty KC, who imposed that sentence in the Crown Court at Nottingham, was wrong to conclude, as he did, that the appellant was a dangerous offender and that an extended sentence was justified and required. There was full credit for an early guilty plea, so the final sentence reflected the learned judge’s view that, after a trial, the appropriate custodial term would have been 21 years. That, it is contended, is out of proportion to the offending, very bad though it is recognised to have been. We are asked on that basis to say that the 14-year term imposed was manifestly excessive and to substitute a shorter custodial term.

Sentence was passed on 26 August 2025, the appellant having pleaded guilty on 27 May 2025 to wounding with intent (count 4); having a bladed or sharply pointed article in a public place without good reason or lawful authority (count 1); and theft (counts 2 and 3). We relate the offences in that order because count 4 was obviously the most serious offence and the sentence on that count was the full 19-year extended sentence imposed in order to reflect the totality of the appellant’s offending behaviour. Count 1 concerned the appellant’s possession of the weapon he used to commit the offence under count 4. Counts 2 and 3 concerned thefts of jewellery by the appellant from the victim under count 4, Ashley Brooks, and his friend Jack Pearson, committed on the same occasion, as we shall explain in a moment. Concurrent sentences were passed on those other counts of 2 years (count 1) and 1 year (each of counts 2 and 3). A charge of attempted wounding with intent (count 5) was ordered to remain on the file on the usual terms.

In the early hours of 26 April 2025, Mr Brooks and Mr Pearson left a pub on Derby Road, Nottingham, to go to an afterparty. They asked the appellant and a woman for a lift believing them to be going to the same party. They got in the back of the car which was a Vauxhall Corsa with only front doors and a rear hatchback. The appellant was the front seat passenger and they headed off with the woman driving. At some point in the journey Mr Brooks called the appellant by the wrong name. In response the appellant became angry and suddenly pulled up the handbrake. The driver screamed and the car hit the kerb. The initial reaction by the appellant was bizarre and dangerous. What he did next was utterly appalling. He pulled out a machete he had with him, from its sheath, stabbed Mr Brooks in and indeed through the leg, demanded that both rear passengers give him everything they had and in fact took jewellery from them worth £4,500 (two gold necklaces, a gold bracelet and two gold rings).

The appellant appeared to be under the influence of drugs. Mr Pearson asked the appellant to let him and Mr Brooks out but the appellant forced the woman to continue driving with Mr Pearson and Mr Brooks trapped in the back. A short time later however the appellant became pale and dropped the machete, at which the woman stopped the car and let Mr Pearson and Mr Brooks out before driving away. Once out of the vehicle Mr Brooks collapsed, bleeding heavily. Mr Pearson used a T-shirt as a makeshift torniquet. Emergency services attended and Mr Brooks was taken to hospital.

We need to describe Mr Brooks leg injury in a little more detail as the context for the severe sentence that resulted; but to complete this initial introduction to the facts, it suffices to say that it was a catastrophic injury and that after various medical procedures the lower part of the leg had to be amputated, an amputation described by Mr Brooks as “through the knee”.

The appellant later handed himself in to the police. He did not answer any questions in interview but, as we have said already, he did then enter early guilty pleas. Those pleas were entered on first appearance in the Crown Court having been indicated before the Magistrates’ Court so the appellant was rightly given full credit. The appellant had six previous convictions for eleven offences spanning from March 2017 (a robbery, committed when he was only 15) to June 2022 (possession of heroin, cocaine with intent to supply, and a bladed article, all committed on the eve of his 19th birthday in breach of a community order for assault offences of battery and assault occasioning actual bodily harm). The wounding with intent using a machete on Mr Brooks’s leg represented a very large jump up in seriousness compared to anything in that unhappy record.

A full pre-sentence report noted that the appellant had accepted his guilt and appeared to be genuinely remorseful. It was considered that he understood the life-changing impact his actions have had on Mr Brooks. He reported excessive daily alcohol consumption and regular drug use at the time, as a response, he said, to a range of stresses in the weeks prior to these offences including separation from a partner. He had been under the influence of alcohol and drugs when committing the offences. There was some suggestion of ADHD in the appellant’s makeup that might make him more prone to impulsive actions. The offences were spontaneous, not planned or premeditated; but of course they were as serious as they were only because of the appellant’s deliberate and premeditated decision to be armed with a machete available, he claimed, for defensive use, but obviously a reckless, dangerous decision, putting a lethal weapon in his hands when entirely likely to be erratic and uncontrolled in his behaviour. He was assessed as having entrenched anti-social and pro-criminal attitudes and life-style and he had been linked to drug dealing activities and criminal associates from that world. He was assessed as having a low maturity for a 24 year old (as he was at the date of the pre-sentence report) and a high risk of causing serious harm by further serious offending.

There were character references from the appellant’s mother suggesting a better side to the appellant, and that if he had been sober he would not have offended as he did, from his partner suggesting that what had happened was out of character, from a cousin, whose experience of the appellant was that of a kind and supportive close relative, more like a brother to her, and from that cousin’s mother to similar effect. The objective reality of the appellant’s previous criminal record and the independent assessment of the author of the pre-sentence report we think provide a more reliable guide than those testimonials to the aspects of the appellant’s character that were relevant to the sentencing exercise. That does not mean those character references are of no value. They indicate the existence of a supportive family network that might have some capacity to assist the appellant after he is released from prison if, while in custody, he is able to find determination to reform. They are also consistent with the observations we have already made, namely that the attack on Mr Brooks was a very major escalation in his offending.

The extreme seriousness of the offence under count 4 was made eloquently clear by the opening passage in the learned judge’s clear and concise sentencing remarks. He said this:

“In just a few short minutes, if that, for no reason at all, you have destroyed a man’s life. I suspect that he, himself, probably thinks, and who could blame him, that he wished he had died because what you have left him is no life at all.

He had a partner, he had a child on the way, he had been out, as far as he was concerned, for just an enjoyable night with friends, and he or his friend made one mistake which, I assume, it has never been spoken to, but I assume was to call you by your brother’s name, not your own. For that, you produced a machete and you used it.

So filled with hatred were you when you did that, that you used such force as to drive that article completely through his lower leg and he could, quite easily, have bled to death waiting for the emergency services to come. As an aside, his friend, who is to be commended for the fact that he stayed and helped, had the horror of seeing all of this unfolding because he, too, had been threatened by you with that weapon.

The inevitable consequence of what you did, such was the damage to that man’s lower leg, that the medics had no choice than to amputate it, and that is what you have left him now. Not just a reminder of you for the rest of his life in the form of a scar but severe enduring disability, and not only physical but mental, as well. Ironically, you, yourself have mental health difficulties of some kind, although they have yet to be diagnosed, but from your own childhood and from your own experiences, you had some scars, too. But none of them can compare to the ones that he has got.”

To be clear, this was by its nature a fatal injury that only failed to kill Mr Brooks because the emergency services reached him in time for his life to be saved.

There was a detailed victim personal statement from Mr Brooks. We have read it in full but we shall not rehearse its detail again now in public. It speaks in moving terms of the horror of the wounding as experienced by Mr Brooks on the night, and of the extent and severity of its consequences. Those consequences, as experienced to date, and those expected to last into the future, indeed to do so for life, are of the utmost severity for Mr Brooks and have an impact on those around him that mean he is not the only victim.

Mr Matthew Smith, the solicitor advocate who also represented the appellant in the court below, has presented the argument for the appellant with realism and economy. It could not be doubted, and Mr Smith has accepted throughout, that at the initial stage of categorising the offence under count 4 within the applicable Sentencing Guideline, it was a category A1 offence - the highest guideline category. Count 4 involved the use of a highly dangerous weapon, so culpability was high, and it resulted in a particularly grave and life-threatening injury causing physical harm, resulting in life-long dependency on third party care and medical treatment and permanent irreversible injury that has a substantial and long-term effect on Mr Brooks’s ability to carry out normal activities or work, that is to say all of the category 1 harm factors were present. The category A1 guideline range for sentence is 10 to 16 years - starting point 12 years. However, as the guideline states explicitly, for a category A1 offence, the extreme nature of the culpability and/or harm factors may justify a sentence above the top of that range and of course the maximum sentence is life imprisonment. So ultimately there is no upper bound to the length of custodial term that can be imposed in an appropriate case, where a standard determinate or extended sentence is passed.

There are three grounds of appeal and we shall take them in turn.

First, it is said that the learned judge seemed to double count the factors of harm and culpability that put count 4 into category A1 to take the starting point outside the range. However, it is not double counting to ask whether in the individual case the factors that put a section 18 assault into category A1 are extreme examples and to consider, if they are, whether the offence was so serious that only a sentence above the top of the category A1 range would be a proper reflection. To the contrary it is simply an application of the express language of the guideline to undertake that exercise.

Mr Smith advanced a particular submission this morning that on that language multiple culpability factors were required before it could be proper to move outside the category A1 range. We do not agree. As Mr Smith realistically accepted in argument this was an act of extreme violence, with an extremely dangerous weapon, causing horrendous injury. That falls within the guideline language. The learned judge said this:

“The guideline that applies in your case indicates that the starting point in a normal case of a category A is twelve years’ imprisonment. The range is between ten and sixteen years. As I have indicated to Mr Smith and he acknowledges it, what the guideline also says is that, for offences like that where the extreme nature of one or more high culpability factor or the extreme impact caused by a combination of high culpability factors may attract a sentence higher than the category range.

Firearms aside, you were carrying the most dangerous bladed weapon that it is possible to contemplate. The devastation that you have caused to that man was not simply life-threatening, it was life-changing and, in all of those circumstances, it seems to me that this case falls outside the standard range.”

In our judgment, that was precisely the exercise to which we have just referred, carried out properly in accordance with the guideline, and a sentence well above the top of the category A1 range was appropriate.

Second, it is said that the learned judge failed properly to reflect the appellant’s remorse, age and immaturity. The sentencing remarks did not state what sentence would have been imposed if those mitigating factors had not been present, so as to quantify the amount of reduction allowed for them. But that has never been a requirement of sentencing remarks. The learned judge did refer to the appellant’s remorse and character references. He did not mention the immaturity assessment indicated in the pre-sentence report but it is obvious that he had considered that report with care and there is no reason to suppose he did not have all of its content well in mind. The real and sole question is whether the above range custodial term that the judge selected of 21 years prior to credit for plea is unreasonably long so as to evidence a failure to give any or any adequate weight to the mitigation.

Third, then, and therefore the only real issue, it is said that indeed that 21-year term (incorrectly described in the advice and grounds as a “starting point”) was manifestly excessive. As to that:

We accept Mr Smith’s submission that the 21-year term chosen by the judge implies a materially even longer term if the appellant did not have the benefit of the mitigation to which we have referred. That does not mean however that there is anything wrong with the sentence imposed in this case. Like the learned judge, we do not consider it necessary to express our conclusion in quantified form. We do not state a notional custodial term longer than 21 years so as then to put an exact number on the reduction for mitigation.

Our conclusion is that a custodial term of 21 years, prior to credit for plea, is consistent with proper weight being given to the appellant’s mitigation. But for that mitigation an even longer term would have been justified, not excessive. As a result, in our judgment, it cannot be said that 14 years after full credit for plea is a manifestly excessive custodial term for the offending we have been considering. This appeal is therefore dismissed.