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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL CRIMINAL DIVISION ON APPEAL FROM THE CROWN COURT AT NORWICH (HER HONOUR JUDGE KATHERINE MOORE) (T20207289) CASE NO: 202502000 A1 Neutral Citation Number: [2026] EWCA Crim 77 |
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London
WC2A 2LL
Before:
LORD JUSTICE JEREMY BAKER
MR JUSTICE PICKEN
MR JUSTICE SWEETING
REX
v
JONATHAN SHORT
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Computer Aided Transcript of Epiq Europe Ltd,
Lower Ground, 46 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1JE
Tel No: 020 7404 1400; Email: rcj@epiqglobal.co.uk (Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)
_________
MS ISOBEL SHORT appeared on behalf of the Appellant
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JUDGMENT
MR JUSTICE SWEETING:
On 16 July 2021, in the Crown Court at Norwich, the Appellant (then aged 21) was convicted of the offence of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.
On 26 January 2022, before the same court, he received an extended sentence of 12 years, comprising a custodial term of 8 years and an extended period of licence of 4 years. No separate penalty was imposed in relation to an offence of possession of cannabis to which he had pleaded guilty and had been committed for sentence by the magistrates. The effect of his guilty plea and conviction was that he was in breach of a suspended sentence of 6 months' detention in a young offenders' institute imposed on 18 December 2019 by the Norwich Crown Court in respect of offences of possessing cannabis with intent to supply and supplying cannabis. The suspended sentence was activated in part, with a reduced term of 3 months, which was to be served concurrently to the extended sentence. He appeals against sentence by leave of the Single Judge.
We turn to the factual circumstances. Prior to the date of the offence, 9 December 2020, the Appellant and the Complainant, Luke Hasdell, had been arguing over social media about a woman named Lybi Baldry. She was a friend of Luke Hasdell and also the girlfriend of the Appellant. Luke Hasdell believed that the Appellant had been cheating on Lybi Baldry, which appears to have been the cause of their disagreement. The argument on social media included threats of violence by both the Appellant and Luke Hasdell, each threatening to seriously injure the other. A message from the Appellant was in these terms:
"Don't you think I won't fucking stab you straight in your windpipe and watch you gasping for breath and bleeding out your fucking throat staring at me in the eyes."
There were numerous messages challenging Luke Hasdell to come and confront the Appellant face to face, culminating in a message which said:
"You sound a bit wound up there, you sound a bit angry. Come and let your anger out. You know where I am, I'm round the corner from you. Door's unlocked brother, door's unlocked."
On 9 December 2020 Luke Hasdell went to Lybi Baldry's address, where he believed the Appellant to be, and entered the property through an unlocked door. He went to Lybi Baldry's room carrying a can of alcohol, where he encountered the Appellant who had a knife in each hand. The Appellant walked quickly towards Luke Hasdell and said, "Have that" and went to stab Luke Hasdell towards his throat with one of the knives. Luke Hasdell put his arm up, the knife went into his arm and it began to bleed heavily. Luke Hasdell then ran from the room and left the address with the Appellant laughing at him. He was subsequently assisted by members of the public who provided first aid and called the medical emergency services and the police.
Luke Hasdell had sustained a stab wound to his upper left arm. He was taken to hospital for treatment. The knife has not been recovered.
At hospital it was found that the wound had cut the main artery to his arm and one of the nerves to his arm. He remained in hospital for several days and had to undergo emergency surgery, to restore the blood flow to his arm, using veins from his leg as a graft to repair the artery.
The victim personal statement included the following:
"The injury and treatment as a result of the injury I received has left me with these permanent scars that cover most of my left arm. Due to the nerve damage caused by the knife, my arm becomes very sore and aches terribly in the colder weather. I have no idea if this will improve in time. However, the pain when it occurs is throughout my whole arm and I am on medication to try to help with this.
I have no feeling in my little finger or my ring finger. This is permanent. I will never have feeling in that part of my hand again. This causes me daily difficulties of lifting items of a heavy weight due to my inability to grip properly. The scarring on my hand and arm has made it impossible to close my hand into a tight fist. To do buttons up, put my socks on, do things in the kitchen as I loved cooking is now more difficult, as I can’t put my arm in certain positions, so it makes these daily activities that we take for granted so much more awkward and difficult to manage. The wounds have healed over now following skin grafts and the removal of a vein in my leg to help repair the damage to my arm, so again another reminder of that awful night. ...
Before this happened, I was working towards a career as a chef, my future now is uncertain. I have been unable to work since the incident and have been placed on furlough since. Becoming a chef was a career I felt happy in, something I was good at, however due to the lack of feeling in my hand, the weakness I have in that arm now, I do believe I will need to try to find something else. It saddens me when I think back to how all this started. I am lucky to not have lost my life, or my arm, but I am forever reminded of that night due to these scars and the pain that I still feel and the memories of that night still haunt me. I try very hard to not think about it too much due to the detrimental effect it has on me and the affect it has had on my family."
The Appellant telephoned the police on 10 December 2020 stating that he believed that they wanted to speak to him about the incident. The Appellant then arranged to meet with police officers and was subsequently arrested. In interview the Appellant gave an account that he had been arguing with Luke Hasdell prior to the incident, when Luke Hasdell came bursting through the bedroom door whilst the Appellant had been trying to cut stitches off a jumper with a knife. The Appellant stated that Luke Hasdell had a bottle of alcohol with him, rather than a can, and had swung the bottle at the Appellant. The Appellant, acting in self-defence, went to punch Luke Hasdell but had hit him with the knife. It follows from the conviction that this account was rejected by the jury.
The Judge began the summary of the background in her sentencing remarks by observing that the Appellant had been convicted after a five-day trial during which the jury had heard a great deal about his behaviour in December 2020. She identified the offence as falling within culpability category A because there was significant planning or premeditation. She determined that it fell into category 2 harm as a grave injury. There is now no dispute that this harm category was correct and indeed was the category identified in the course of mitigation at the sentencing hearing. This morning Ms Ascherson before us has realistically conceded that the Judge was correct to place this offence within culpability category A.
The Appellant was aged 21 at the date of sentence. His only previous convictions were those for which he had received a suspended sentence order in the Crown Court at Norwich on 18 December 2019.
The remaining grounds of appeal are that the imposition of an extended sentence was manifestly excessive as the offence and the background of the Appellant did not support a finding that the Appellant was dangerous, and the sentence failed to properly reflect the Appellant's character, his youth and the changes that have come over him in custody.
In relation to what happened in the bedroom, the Judge made a number of specific observations and findings in her sentencing remarks. She said:
"As I say, having heard the evidence, I’m quite sure that you goaded Mr Hasdall into attending your address so you could carry out your threat – you intended to stab him. The following afternoon your front door was unlocked, the door to your room was unlocked and Mr Hasdall arrived, opening the door as you predicted, having consumed alcohol and with a can of drink in his hand. He was no threat to you. When he went into the room where you were, you were already armed with a knife in each hand and you walked straight at him, very quickly, saying, 'Have that', and quite deliberately made a stabbing motion towards him aiming, he believed, towards your [sic] neck and causing him to raise his arm to protect himself.
The knife went into his arm, causing an obvious injury. It began bleeding and it began bleeding heavily."
As far as the Appellant's intentions on that occasion were concerned the Judge said:
"The injury you inflicted and the treatment it required have left permanent physical scarring, loss of feeling, weakness, and the psychological harm also endures. Although the messages which you received from him were threatening on their face, hurtful and provocative, I reiterate that, in my judgment, you were well aware that he posed you no real threat. Rather than ignore him or seek the help of the authorities had you genuinely felt you needed it, you embarked on this calculated course, and I’ve taken some time to set it out because that is the basis on which I sentence you having heard the evidence."
The Judge had the advantage of hearing all the evidence and had come to the firm conclusion that having made a threat to stab the Complainant, the Appellant followed through by arming himself with a knife and goading the Complainant into making the visit at which he was almost immediately attacked, with a knife being thrust into his neck.
The issue raised in this appeal is whether it was appropriate for the Judge to make a finding of dangerousness against that background and to impose an extended sentence. The court has on many occasions expressed its reluctance to interfere with a decision of this sort made by a trial judge who heard the trial and saw the parties give evidence. That is for the simple reason that the trial judge is, as a result, in a much better position than this court to make the necessary assessment of whether an offender should be viewed as dangerous.
The Judge gave clear reasons for the conclusion which she reached:
"You, as I say, can rightly rely on your youth at the time and the fact that you’ve not offended violently previously or subsequently. It counts in your favour as general mitigation and also when addressing whether you are a dangerous offender, but, of course, those matters aren’t determinative. I’ve considered very carefully the content of the pre-sentence reports and all the other material on the Digital Case [System] about you and, of course, the evidence at the trial and the submissions that I’ve heard.
The authors of the presentence report take the view that you are someone best managed as posing a high risk of serious harm. In my judgment, the evidence in this case demonstrates that when you form the view that you or a member of your family has been wronged or slighted or insulted, you seek some sort of physical revenge. Your actions were planned, they were calculated, you did arm yourself with two knives intending to use them offensively. You did use a knife offensively. Until you develop the ability to withstand a slight or a perceived slight, in my judgment, notwithstanding the absence of similar convictions, you do pose a significant risk to members of the public of serious harm through committing specified violent offences and that risk is such that it is necessary here to impose an extended determinate sentence."
There is nothing in the Judge's findings of fact which in our view can be criticised. She properly laid the foundation for the sentence that she passed based on her first-hand knowledge from the trial. She had the benefit of a pre-sentence report, which described the Appellant as at high risk of reoffending “at any time” and posing a danger to known adults. An addendum report from a different probation officer concurred with that conclusion.
There was also material which suggested a lack of maturity and insight. This accorded with the Judge's view that the Appellant had not yet developed the ability and emotional maturity to resist resorting to violence when insulted or slighted. The finding of dangerousness involves an individual assessment. It does not require an antecedent history of violence. The reasons for imposing the sentence may lie entirely within the circumstances of the offence for which sentence is being passed.
The decision to impose such a sentence should not be taken lightly, and there is no indication that it was in this case. It is an important decision for the offender because it imposes a different regime in relation to release and supervision in the community. However, it is also an important decision for the public because it is designed to mitigate the heightened risk that some offenders pose. As this court observed in Howlett [2019] EWCA Crim 1224:
"It will be a rare case in which an appellate court which has not conducted the trial and seeing the offender would overturn on sentence an exercise of judicial discretion in relation to an assessment of dangerousness."
We do not consider that there is any basis on which the Judge's analysis of the issue of dangerousness and her conclusions can properly be criticised. The custodial term imposed was within the category range and appropriate to reflect the overall offending. The extension period reflected the need identified by the Judge for supervision once the Appellant is released. It is not arguable, in our view, that the extended sentence was either excessive or wrong in principle.
We turn to personal mitigation, which was the remaining part of the grounds of appeal urged upon us.
The contention that the Judge had failed to properly take into account personal mitigation was essentially advanced on the basis that the custodial term was above the starting point, which was itself initially said to be wrong for reasons which were urged in writing in relation to culpability but conceded this morning. As we indicated, the Judge's assessment of culpability is unimpeachable.
The Judge also explained carefully why she regarded the offence as aggravated and referred expressly to the available mitigation:
"... so it is culpability A, category 2 case, elevated within the range to address the material in the victim personal statement dealing with the adverse effect the injury has had on the complainant’s ability to carry out his day-to-day work.
It is, of course, all the more serious because it’s an offence committed during the currency of a suspended sentence. True it is, the suspended sentence was imposed for an unrelated offence, an offence related to cannabis trafficking, but nonetheless that suspended sentence was hanging over you – you were obliged to undertake unpaid work by way of reparation and engage in rehabilitation activity requirements to steer you away from criminal activity, but plainly those interventions were of no effect as far as this offending was concerned.
When I approach sentence, of course, I bear in mind totality, but you have mitigation placed before the court ably today and it’s in various locations on the Digital Case [System] ... I have considered all of it carefully. I don’t repeat it all, but I bear everything that Miss Ascherson has said very much in mind and I bear in mind the content of the reports about you."
As we have already said, the Judge went on to refer to the Appellant's youth and lack of any previous violent offending, observing that it counted as general mitigation. In our view, the Judge took into account all of the relevant material, weighing in the balance both the aggravating and mitigating features and those which justified an increase from the starting point for the reasons which the Judge gave. She reached a sentence which we do not conclude is manifestly excessive.
For the reasons set out, we dismiss the appeal. We are most grateful to Ms Ascherson for her succinct and focused submissions.
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