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	England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Decisions
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Decisions >> C, R. v [2009] EWCA Crim 446 (20 February 2009) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2009/446.html Cite as: [2009] EWCA Crim 446

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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London, WC2A 2LL
		20th February 2009

1. MR JUSTICE HEDLEY: This an appeal with leave of the single judge against a sentence of 10 months' detention and training order, directed to be served consecutively to a sentence of 8 months' detention and training order which was already being served for an unrelated matter. This sentence was imposed by His Honour Judge Lawson QC sitting in the Crown Court at Maidstone, following an early guilty plea by this appellant to an offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
2. There were two co-accused involved in this matter; one of whom was sentenced with him and one of whom was then awaiting trial.
3. This, it has to be said, was an ugly offence. Although the appellant was aged but 16 at the time, the offence occurred in public, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon of 13th June 2008 in Tunbridge Wells. A young Asian man was on his way home from work. He met up with the appellant with whom he had in fact worked and whom he fondly believed himself to be on good terms with. The appellant provoked an argument about the appellant's own girlfriend. It was apparent that both the appellant and his co-accused who were present at the time were drunk and they simply launched an assault on this young Asian man. Fortunately for the interests of justice, most of it was caught on closed circuit television then operating. Those who viewed the closed circuit television would be able to see all three of these men punching and kicking at the unfortunate victim, who ended up on the ground. The punching and kicking did not cease at that point. Mercifully the injuries, which could have been very serious, were in fact comparatively transitory, involving, as they did, a haematoma over the eye and bruising over the jaw and eye socket. Although X-rays were taken because of anxieties about what might have happened, in fact no fractures were discovered. It is, of course, to the credit of the appellant that he entered a guilty plea.
4. He had a previous caution for common assault and the learned judge was entirely correct in his conclusion that this case passed the custody threshold and merited an immediate sentence of custody and that was inevitably to be a sentence of detention and training. Nor indeed could there be any complaint as to principle in that the learned judge directed the sentence to be served consecutively to the one already being served for an unrelated matter.
5. Mr Bush, in an entirely realistic and helpful submission to the court, has argued that although the learned judge was entirely right in his approach, the sentence that he selected was too long having regard to the injuries, having regard to the guilty plea and having regard to the age of the appellant. It is right that the court should bear in mind the overall totality of the sentence.
6. The appellant did himself no favours by displaying a number of very unattractive attitudes towards others in the pre-sentence report and does himself no favour in this court by his intemperate behaviour in custody, although the court does notice that he was willing to apply himself to the educational aspects of detention. It may be, of course, that this is one of those cases where what is needed is for this young man simply to grow up and adjust himself to adult life.
7. Overall, we are persuaded by the submissions of Mr Bush that the sentence here was too long and that what the court should do is to impose a sentence which is, as it were, the next step down, according to section 101(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2000, which means that the sentence of 12 months will be quashed and there will be substituted for it a sentence of 4 months' detention and training order to run consecutively to the current sentence, meaning an overall sentence of 12 months which is one of the permissible sentences. To that extent and for those reasons this appeal will be allowed.