R v CHA

There are reporting restrictions in this case. For the avoidance of any doubt, we set out the restrictions in detail. They are as follows:

The case was listed under a randomly generated cypher, not – we repeat not – for the protection of the offender, but because of the nature of the relationships which, as will become apparent, are key to our decision and which might lead to jigsaw identification of C1 and C2 if the name of the offender is published.

We shall refer to the offender in this judgment as "the offender" and will use random letters to refer to other persons involved when dealing with the factual background. We use neutral pronouns (they/their) to refer to C1 and C2. We appreciate that the original reporting restriction order made in the court below included a direction permitting the names of the offender and the deceased to be reported, together with the location of their residence, and further that such details have been reported. To that extent there will already have been the possibility of jigsaw identification of C1 and C2. There is nothing we can do about any reporting that there has been in the past. But as the protection afforded to a victim by s.45A is intended to endure for that person’s lifetime, the above order for reporting restrictions has removed the direction permitting publication of names and locations in future so as to afford C1 and C2 maximum protection going forward. For this reason also the names of the offender and the deceased in this judgment have been and will continue to be anonymised.

This is an application by His Majesty's Solicitor General under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 ("the 1988 Act") for leave to refer to this court a sentence which she considers to be unduly lenient.

The offender is 52 years old. On 12 December 2025, after a trial before Ellenbogen J and a jury, he was convicted of five offences: murder, cruelty to a child, perverting the course of justice, and two offences of perjury.

On 16 January 2026, he was sentenced on the count of murder to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 27 years and 321 days. The final minimum term was arrived at by deducting the time which the offender had by then spent on remand from a term of 29 years and six months. Concurrent determinate sentences were passed for the remaining offences as follows: child cruelty, six years and nine months' imprisonment; perverting the course of justice, six years and nine months' imprisonment; and for the two offences of perjury four years and three years' imprisonment respectively. The determinate sentences are not the subject of any criticism by the Solicitor General, and we need say no more about them. The target of the Solicitor General's criticism, giving rise to this application, is the length of the minimum term, which is said to be unduly lenient.

We take the facts, which are agreed, from the Final Reference. The murder was of the offender's wife, "A". She and the offender had married in 2003. They had a child, C1, some years later. There was a younger sibling, C2, by the summer of 2016 when the offender killed their mother.

The marriage foundered and in December 2015 A began a relationship with someone else. The offender found out when he opened a card in her handbag and searched messages on her phone whilst she was asleep. On 24 December 2015, A told him that she had met someone else. By early January 2016 the offender and A were sleeping in separate bedrooms, albeit living together in the same house with their children. The marriage was effectively at an end.

In 2016 the offender conducted various internet searches aimed at trying to find detail about what A was doing. The searches included: how to track a mobile telephone; how to read WhatsApp messages; how to unlock and clone a mobile telephone; how to hack a Facebook account and bypass passwords on a laptop or tablet (including "I want to unlock my cheating wife's tablet"); how to delete the user log on a computer; how to bypass or immobilise a scanner on a mobile telephone; how to send an anonymous text message from a different number, or online; and how to intercept text messages.

In addition, the offender conducted research on A's new partner and his wife. The offender then contacted the wife, including through the adoption of a false persona, informing her of her husband's affair and that he was planning to leave her. Later, the offender arranged to meet the wife. The offender also made enquiries about paying for someone to assault A's new partner.

Between 19 January and 13 March 2016, the offender made internet searches for household and other poisons, including those which kill instantly; classified drugs having the capacity to sedate, render a person unconscious, cause amnesia and/or kill, and their effects; the consequence of an overdose; where to obtain such drugs and how to remove their taste; how to hypnotise someone instantly; covert hypnosis training; tasteless liquid laxatives; how to make someone thirsty; and drug addicts locally. These were interspersed with the search terms "sayings about vengeance" and "hate liars".

By the end of January 2016, at the latest, the offender was contemplating murdering A. He sought to, and did, take advantage of the difficulties in the relationship between C1 and A caused by A's new relationship. Over the course of the following months the offender manipulated C1's views of A.

In March 2016, A moved out of the matrimonial home. However, she remained actively involved in caring for the children. She routinely visited the house early in the morning and on certain evenings each week. That same month the offender began an online relationship with another woman. He met her for the first time on 1 April 2016.

From mid-May 2016, A would see her children at the home on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. During the late May Bank Holiday weekend in 2016 the offender decided that he was going to murder his wife and that he was going to involve C1 in that murder. On the Bank Holiday Monday (30 May 2016), the offender asked C1 whether C1 wanted to get rid of their mother. C1 was too young fully to comprehend the question, but they agreed to the suggestion without having any real understanding of what would happen and when. On C1’s own account, however, by 2 June 2016 they had come to realise that their mother was going to die and they were going to help their father to do it.

At about 6 pm on Thursday 2 June 2016, A arrived at the family home in accordance with the regular arrangement. A's mother dropped C1 off at the house at a similar time, having taken C1 and C2 out on a day trip during the school half-term holiday. The offender was present and had taken cocaine in order to assist him to commit the forthcoming murder. He was described by A's mother as appearing that evening "like a cat on a hot tin roof".

After A's mother had left to go home, and prompted by the plans their father had discussed with them, C1 suggested to A that A close her eyes and hold out her hands to receive a surprise. Having pre-selected a drawing to give to their mother, C1 went to retrieve it from the living room. Whilst they were out and whilst A was in that vulnerable position, the offender approached A from behind and slit her throat with a knife in a rapid and forceful action which caused an incised wound 13 centimetres long, severing her carotid artery, her jugular vein, trachea, oesophagus and thyroid gland, and also causing muscle damage. It missed her spine by just a couple of millimetres. A was rendered unable to speak or scream and fell to the floor. The incision caused an arterial spray which covered the floor and much of the walls in her blood.

The offender had instructed C1 to go upstairs to join C2, who was meant to be asleep. C1 was told to wait until the offender called them to come down again. Whilst C1 was upstairs, the offender inflicted two wounds to his own head. He then called C1 downstairs. When they came down the offender inflicted a wound to C1's forearm, with a view to supporting the offender's account of self-defence. He used the same knife on C1 that he had used to murder their mother. On their new account given in 2022 and 2023 (see below), C1 said that they had not previously known that they would be wounded as part of the plan. C1 said that they had protested, telling their father that they did not want to be wounded but their father did it anyway. At the time C1 nevertheless went on to tell the police on 6 June 2016 that the cut to their arm had been inflicted by their mother.

At 7.34 pm on 2 June 2016, a 999 call was made from the land line telephone by C1. Shortly after the call connected, the offender spoke to the operator. The call lasted for just under 11 minutes. The offender told the operator that he and his child had just been attacked by his estranged wife with a knife. He said that she had inflicted wounds to his head and hand and to their child’s arm. During the telephone call C1 can be overheard talking, including saying that their mother had just wounded them with a knife. In addition, C2 can be heard speaking. C2 was already aware by then of the false narrative that their mother had wounded both their father and C1.

The police attended at the scene at 7.42 pm. At 8.51 pm the offender was interviewed as a witness. However, at 11.10 pm he was arrested on suspicion of murder and was interviewed under caution on 3 and 4 June 2016. The offender was charged with the offence of murder on 5 June 2016. He was admitted to conditional bail on 7 June 2016. He was awarded regular, supervised contact with the children, which would take place at various locations, including at his mother's home. His contact with the children continued up to and beyond the criminal trial in May 2017 and was still in place when there was a Family Court hearing in May 2018.

On 6 June 2016, police conducted an ABE (Achieving Best Evidence) interview with C1. In that interview C1 stated that their mother and the offender had been in the kitchen on 2 June 2016 whilst C1 was in another room watching television. C1 said that they heard their mother screaming and shouting at the offender. C1 went into the kitchen and told their mother to stop. C1 stated that their mother then picked up a knife and wounded them. C1 said that the offender told them to go upstairs and to lock themself and C2 in the bathroom. C1 then heard the offender groan. They said that they came downstairs a few minutes later at his instruction. The offender was covered in blood and C1 saw their mother's legs through an open door. This account was to support the offender's subsequent case at trial that he had been under attack from A who was armed with a knife; that he had managed to wrestle it off her; and that he had acted in self-defence.

On 12 December 2016, the trial of the offender commenced at the Central Criminal Court. However, the jury were discharged on 15 December 2016. After this the offender used (as found by the judge) the supervised contact sessions with C1 repeatedly to reinforce the importance of C1 "sticking to the plan" in relation to the false narrative. He told C1 that he would go to prison if C1 did not do so and he encouraged C1 to maintain that false account.

The offender's re-trial at the Central Criminal Court commenced on 2 May 2017. He gave evidence on 11 and 12 May 2017 in which he stated that both he and their child, C1, had been wounded by A and that he had acted in self-defence. On 30 May 2017, the jury found the offender not guilty.

In May 2018, there was a fact-finding hearing in the Family Division of the High Court before Cobb J (as he then was). On 3 and 4 May 2018, the offender gave evidence under oath in those proceedings and in terms consistent with what he had said under oath at trial in 2017 at the Central Criminal Court.

On 23 May 2018, Cobb J ordered that the long-term care arrangements of C1 and C2 should be with the offender's brother and sister-in-law. In a further ABE interview conducted in May 2017, C1 had said that they had also seen A stab the offender in the back of the shoulder with the knife. This interview had not been played to the jury at the 2017 trial, although the evidence of both C1's ABE interviews was received by the Family Court and treated as true by all parties in those proceedings and by the court. Hitherto, the children had been with foster carers, but in September 2018 they moved permanently to live with the offender's brother and sister-in-law.

In 2021, C1 told trusted adults that the account C1 had previously given about the death of A was not true. As a result, C1 was ABE interviewed again in both January 2022 and January 2023. C1 was now a teenager. C1 said that they had not told the truth in 2016. C1 described how the offender had recruited them to help the offender kill their mother. C1 gave an account consistent with that set out above including that, having left their mother holding out her hands with her eyes shut, C1 left the kitchen and then heard a gurgling sound and a thud. C1 did not say that they had seen her mother with a knife or that A had inflicted any wound on C1 or on the offender. Instead, C1 said that the offender had cut their arm deliberately after their mother had been killed in order to create a false impression about what had taken place.

On 30 July 2024, the offender was re-charged with A's murder. On 7 November 2024, the Court of Appeal quashed the offender's acquittal for the offence of murder and ordered a re-trial. Their reasons were given in a reserved judgment dated 25 November 2024.

The re-trial took place in November to December 2025. The offender maintained his original account of acting in self-defence; but on 12 December 2025 the jury convicted him of all five offences on the indictment.

There were victim personal statements from C1, A's mother, brother and sister and from the offender's brother. We have read them all. The effect on C1 has been profound and heart-breakingly damaging, as might have been expected. To use his child in this way to kill their mother was an act of utter cruelty, made still worse by injuring C1 and suborning C1 to give lying accounts to the police and to the criminal and family courts. A's family and the wider family of the offender has also been terribly affected by the death and the prolonged deception which accompanied it. We set out a short passage from the statement of C1:

The offender had two previous convictions dating from 1994, for offences of deception regarding a road traffic matter and a number of shoplifting offences. As the judge remarked, these were irrelevant in the context of the present offending.

There is only one sentence for an offence of murder, which is a life sentence. The judge was obliged to set the minimum term which the offender must serve before the Parole Board can consider him for release. She set the term by reference to the provisions of Schedule 21 to the Sentencing Act 2020 ("Schedule 21").

The judge had been invited by the prosecution, but declined, to find that the circumstances of A's murder were so exceptional as to call for a whole of life order. She decided, however, that the combination of the circumstances of the killing taken together with the associated offending rendered the seriousness of the murder particularly high, engaging the provisions of paragraph

3(1) of Schedule 21, where a 30 year starting point is identified. The judge listed the factors which she said had led her to that conclusion:

Having listed the above factors as underpinning her conclusion that the correct starting point was 30 years, the judge observed that there were no other separate aggravating factors to be taken into account. She gave limited credit for the absence of previous relevant offending. She firmly rejected the submission made on behalf of the offender that A's infidelity constituted some provocation and was thus further mitigation.

The judge went on to set the appropriate minimum term as 29 years and six months which, having deducted the period of time which the offender had then spent on remand, resulted in the final minimum term of 27 years and 321 days.

Mr Little KC, for the Solicitor General, submits that the minimum term was simply too low. The Solicitor General no longer seeks to argue that the circumstances of this murder called for a whole of life term, or that it was a murder done for gain. However, Mr Little argues that the circumstances of this murder, in a domestic context with the children present, was sufficient of itself to qualify as a murder of particularly high seriousness which called for a 30 year minimum term under Schedule 21. The judge should then have made a further uplift to reflect the additional offences of child cruelty, perverting the course of justice and perjury over the ensuing eight years. The judge's failure to approach sentence in this way had led her to the determination of a minimum term that was not just lenient but was unduly lenient.

Miss Grahame KC, for the offender, submits that there were two routes by which the judge could have arrived at the appropriate minimum term in this case: either (i) by taking a 15 year starting point and aggravating it very substantially by reference to the aggravating features of the murder together with the associated offences; or (ii) taking the aggravating factors of the murder and the associated offences together to reach a conclusion that the seriousness of the murder was particularly high. The judge took the latter course and, having done so, correctly decided that to aggravate the 30 year starting point any further would be to double count matters to which she had already had regard in arriving at that term under Schedule 21.

In Attorney General's Reference (No 4 of 1989) [1990] 1 WLR 41 Lord Lane CJ, giving the judgment of the court, set out the proper approach to References under section 36 of the 1988 Act, at 45-46:

“The first thing to be observed is that it is implicit in the section that this court may only increase sentences which it concludes were unduly lenient. It cannot, we are confident, have been the intention of Parliament to subject defendants to the risk of having their sentences increased—with all the anxiety that this naturally gives rise to—merely because in the opinion of this court the sentence was less than this court would have imposed. A sentence is unduly lenient, we would hold, where it falls outside the range of sentences which the judge, applying his mind to all the relevant factors, could reasonably consider appropriate. In that connection regard must of course be had to reported cases, and in particular to the guidance given by this court from time to time in the so-called guideline cases. However it must always be remembered that sentencing is an art rather than a science; that the trial judge is particularly well placed to assess the weight to be given to various competing considerations; and that leniency is not in itself a vice. That mercy should season justice is a proposition as soundly based in law as it is in literature.

The second thing to be observed about the section is that, even where it considers that the sentence was unduly lenient, this court has a discretion as to whether to exercise its powers…”

More recently, the Court of Appeal has identified section 36 as being for the purpose of the avoidance of gross error, the allaying of widespread public concern at what appears to be an unduly lenient sentence, and the preservation of public confidence in cases where a judge appears to have departed to a substantial extent from the norms of sentencing (Attorney General's Reference (No 132 of 2001) (R v Johnson) [2003] 1 Cr App R(S) 41).

We turn to the correct approach to setting a minimum term, having regard to the provisions of Schedule 21. In R v Peters and others [2005] EWCA Crim 605; [2005] 2 Cr App R(S) 101, Judge LJ (as he then was) stated at [9]:

“We should further emphasise that Schedule 21 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 does not affect any change in the practice of this Court when it is invited to consider an appeal against the judge's determination of the minimum term to be served by the defendant. The Court will examine the specified period. If, looked at overall, this Court takes the view that the end result fell within the appropriate range of sentence and the margin of judgment and discretion given to the sentencing judge, nice points, whether or not based on a mathematical calculation, about whether he allowed sufficiently for this, or that specific feature of the case, will not result in a successful appeal. In short, this Court will not interfere with the minimum term specified by the judge unless, in all the circumstances, it is manifestly excessive or wrong in principle.”

In R v Jones and others [2005] EWCA Crim 3115; [2006] 2 Cr App R (S) 19, the Court of Appeal considered a number of appeals relating to appeals against sentence in murder cases and, in particular, gave guidance on fixing the minimum term in cases of murder of "exceptionally high" or "particularly high" seriousness. In Jones Lord Phillips CJ made clear that the guidance in Schedule 21 is to assist the judge to determine the appropriate sentence. Each case will depend critically on its particular facts: see [6] – [8]:

“6.

Perhaps the most important general point to be made in respect of these cases is one that this Court made in both Sullivan and Peters. The guidance given by Sch.21 is provided to assist the judge to determine the appropriate sentence. The judge must have regard to the guidance, but each case will depend critically on its particular facts. If the judge concludes that it is appropriate to follow a course that does not appear to reflect the guidance, the judge should explain the reason for this.

7.

The next point to make is that there are huge gaps between the starting points. The difference between fifteen and thirty years detention is enormous. The difference between thirty years and whole life may, depending on the age of the offender, be even greater. The three starting points provide a very broad framework for the sentencing exercise. They are so far apart that it will often be impossible to divorce the choice of starting point from the application of aggravating and mitigating factors. This is expressly recognised by paragraph 8 of Schedule 21. Where aggravating factors have led the judge to adopt the higher of two potential starting points, or mitigating facts have led him to adopt the lower, he must be careful not to apply those factors a second time when making to that starting point any adjustment that may be appropriate to reflect the other material facts.

8.

The starting points give the judge guidance as to the range within which the appropriate sentence is likely to fall having regard to the more salient features of the offence … The starting points must not be used mechanistically so as to produce, in effect, three different categories of murder. Full regard must be had to the features of the individual case so that the sentence truly reflects the seriousness of the particular offence.”

The care with which this experienced judge approached sentence is evident from her sentencing remarks. She had presided over the trial. She heard C1 and other family members give evidence. As Lord Phillips CJ pointed out in the passage we have cited above, each case will depend on its own facts. Moreover, as Judge LJ (as he then was) indicated in Peters, this court will be slow to interfere with a minimum term arrived at by the trial judge, unless it is manifestly excessive (for which, in the circumstances of a Reference we read unduly lenient) or wrong in principle.

But the facts of this case are extraordinary. It is unsurprising that the (non-exhaustive) list of factors cited under the various paragraphs of Schedule 21 do not include the suborning of an offender's own young child to assist in a murder and its cover-up. The callous, selfish manipulation and abuse by the offender of his vulnerable young child is a particularly abhorrent aspect of this case. He has done C1 life-long harm, not just by killing their mother, but by leaving C1 with the sense of dread and guilt at their involvement in that terrible deed. It is to be hoped that C1 will realise, with time and help, that they are blameless and that none of this was their fault. As the children’s father, the offender should have protected C1 and C2. Instead, he cast them adrift in the most painful and cynical manner. His offending thoroughly merited a long minimum term.

This was an exceptionally challenging sentencing exercise. As Lord Phillips pointed out in Jones, the starting points in Schedule 21 are not to be used mechanistically but are there to provide a range within which it is expected that the appropriate minimum term will fall. Full regard must be had to the features of the case so that the sentence "truly reflects the seriousness of the particular case". As we have sought to indicate, what made the circumstances of this particular domestic killing so very bad was the exploitation and abuse by the father of his own child. The offender's involvement of C1 in setting up their mother to be brutally killed, and then injuring C1 with the same knife he had used to kill their mother shortly before, was truly appalling. We find it hard to conceive of a more heinous plot. Even the younger child was not kept immune from involvement: at the time and for many years afterwards C2 was led to believe that their mother had attacked their father and C1.

Looking carefully at the judge's sentencing remarks, we have concluded that this particular aspect of the case was not sufficiently reflected in the final minimum term. We consider that the 30 year term should have been further aggravated to take into account the full extent of the exploitation of, and degree of breach of trust and consequent damage done to, the offender's two children, on top of the loss of their mother. This included the emotional manipulation of, and pressure put on, C1 not just at the time of the murder, but subsequently over many years and two sets of court proceedings, which will significantly have added to the harm already done to them.

The offences taken together were all part of a heinous plan by the offender to kill A and to get away with it. To be sure of doing so he involved his young child in that plan. For eight years it worked, until C1, as they grew older, came to realise how wrong it was, how miserably exploited they had been, and bravely, so bravely, told the truth about how their father had killed their mother. It is thanks to C1 that justice has been served at last.

We conclude that these features of the harm done call for a further uplift to the minimum term in this case, to an extent that the present term may properly be considered unduly lenient.

Accordingly we give leave. We quash the minimum term of 27 years and 321 days, and replace it with one of 31 years and 321 days.