BAILII is celebrating 24 years of free online access to the law! Would you consider making a contribution?
No donation is too small. If every visitor before 31 December gives just £1, it will have a significant impact on BAILII's ability to continue providing free access to the law.
Thank you very much for your support!

Royal Courts of Justice

The Strand

London WC2

Tuesday 27th January 1998

B E F O R E :

LORD JUSTICE POTTER

MR JUSTICE MAURICE KAY

and

MR JUSTICE DAVID STEEL

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

R E G I N A

- v -

MARK ANTHONY PAUL BROWN

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Computer Aided Transcript of the Stenograph Notes of

Smith Bernal Reporting Limited

180 Fleet Street, London EC4A 2HD

Tel No: 0171 421 4040 Fax No: 0171 831 8838

(Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)

- - - - - - - - - - - -

MISS C ENGLISH appeared on behalf of the Appellant

- - - - - - - - - - - -

JUDGMENT

( As Approved by the Court )

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Crown Copyright

Tuesday 27th January 1998

MR JUSTICE MAURICE KAY: Between February and June 1997, this appellant pleaded guilty to some twelve offences contained in five different indictments. He was eventually sentenced on 4th June 1997 in the Crown Court at Wood Green by His Honour Judge Finney. Indictment 1 contained a count of unlawful wounding and a second count of robbery, they arising from the same circumstances. He received sentences of two years and four years' imprisonment concurrent in respect of that indictment. Indictment 2 contained two charges of offering to supply a Class A drug, namely, ecstasy, and a Class B drug, namely, cannabis. He received two concurrent sentences of six months' imprisonment for those. Indictment 3 contained three counts each charging robbery. For those the appellant was sentenced to six years' imprisonment, concurrently with each other but consecutive to indictment 1. Indictment 4 contained three further charges of robbery and one of theft. For the robberies he received six years' imprisonment on each and for the theft, two years' imprisonment, all those to run concurrently with each other and with indictment 3. Finally, indictment 5 contained a single count of attempted robbery. For that he received a sentence of three years' imprisonment to run consecutively. The upshot of that catalogue was that he was sentenced in all to thirteen years' imprisonment, which was expressed to be a sentence passed under the provisions of section 2(2)(b) of the Criminal Justice Act 1991.

The appellant's initial application for leave to appeal against sentence was refused by the single judge, but he was subsequently granted leave by the full Court.

The facts giving rise to this case disclose an alarming state of affairs. The appellant was released from a previous sentence in April 1996. In July 1996 he started on the series of offences with which the present case is concerned. On 9th July 1996, in Camden Town, he approached a man in the street and asked for money. He was given 10p. Later the same day he approached the same man and this time was given 20p. In the course of that second transaction the appellant pushed the man against a hedge, took a further £10 from him and ran off. As he was perpetrating the offence of robbery, he used a knife and caused a significant wound to the victim's cheek. He was arrested shortly afterwards. He was found to be in possession of a stanley knife and a blood-stained £10 note. The appellant was then granted bail.

On 5th October 1996, in Camden High Street, he approached two plain clothes police officers and offered to supply them with ecstasy and cannabis. Not surprisingly, he was arrested. In the event, he had no drugs on him at all, hence the charges of offering to supply rather than attempting or supplying, and he was again admitted to bail.

The most serious part of the present case concerns a series of robberies on minicab drivers that took place between September 1996 and November 1996, and they are the offences charged in the remaining indictments. The first of them had occurred slightly before the offences of offering to supply drugs to the police officers. The common theme of the offences against minicab drivers was that they all involved the applicant ordering a minicab, and, after a short journey, asking the driver to change a £20 note. Thereafter he would threaten the driver with a knife and rob the driver of money and, occasionally, other items.

The series began on 23rd September 1996 at Manor House, where he robbed a driver of £50 in cash and certain other personal items. On 4th October 1996 at Stoke Newington there was a similar incident. On 14th October 1996 the same kind of offence was committed again, this time at Stamford Hill. On that occasion there was a struggle with the driver, and the applicant took a wallet containing a driving licence and various personal papers. On 25th October 1996 he robbed a further driver of some cash, rings and a chain, and he was to repeat that kind of offence again later that day, robbing another driver of about £10. The very next day, 25th October 1996, he robbed a further driver of a sum of money. The final occurrence in this sequence was on 30th November 1996 at Tottenham, where he attempted to rob a taxi driver. A struggle took place in which he threatened the driver with a knife before escaping empty handed. However, he was arrested shortly after.

It is apparent from that history that, during the course of all those robberies and that attempted robbery, the appellant was on bail twice over and, as we have already indicated, had only recently been released from prison in any event. His initial inclination was to deny involvement when interviewed by the police, but in due course the victims of the robberies began to identify him in identification parades.

The circumstances which led the judge to conclude that this was a case in which the provisions of section 2(2)(b) of the 1991 Act should be applied included the nature of this appellant's previous convictions. Confining ourselves to ones where robbery was included, he was convicted on 18th May 1982 at the Snaresbrook Crown Court and received a sentence of three years' imprisonment for robbery; in the same court on 8th February 1993 he was convicted of robbery and received a sentence of two years' imprisonment; on 12th March 1993 in Wood Green Crown Court he was convicted of thirteen offences of which four were robberies, in respect of which he received two years' imprisonment; and on 23rd November 1993 at Snaresbrook Crown Court he was convicted of six offences of which four were robberies and for which he received a total of four years' imprisonment. It was that last sentence from which he had been released in April 1996. The circumstances of the robberies for which he had been sentenced on that occasion were very similar indeed to the ones in the present case, involving the use of a knife and the robbery of minicab drivers.

It is not surprising, in all those circumstances, that the learned judge came to the conclusion that section 2(2)(b) had to be used; indeed, it is not now suggested on behalf of the appellant that that was an inappropriate finding.

In passing sentence, the learned judge said this:

"Every one of the last four robberies [ie the four for which he was sentenced in 1993] was committed using a knife. It seems a little uncertain whether that was the same as some of the previous ones, but the last four ..., in respect of which you were released in April 1996, involved the use of a knife. Within three months of your release you committed another robbery using, on that occasion, a stanley knife. On that occasion your victim was wounded. Every one of the robberies of minicab drivers which you then committed ... were committed with the use of a knife. On some of those instances the minicab drivers tried to resist, and in one case in particular, I think, tried to resist with a bit of a struggle. I think on that occasion the driver received a small cut to his hand. It seems to me that if this goes on and you continue your career, sooner or later somebody is going to be killed, or at the very least very seriously injured. That is the serious harm from which I am protecting the public. You are a persistent robber, you persistently use a knife, and one of these days somebody is going to be killed, that is why I passed the sentences which will be longer than normally commensurable with the offence, although it has to be said, not all that longer in the circumstances."

In making her submissions before us today, Miss English has, as we have indicated, accepted the judge's decision that section 2(2)(b) was appropriate. Her main submission to us is that, even within the parameters of section 2(2)(b), sufficient protection could have been secured for the public by a significantly shorter sentence, and, in that regard, she questions the logic of the structure of the sentences, submitting that the final attempted robbery was no different from, and no worse than, the other minicab robberies, and the sentence for that, she submits, ought to have been concurrent with the other robberies rather than consecutive to them. In other words, she is effectively submitting that the total sentence should be in the region of ten years.

The whole purpose of section 2(2)(b) is to pass sentences which are longer than would be simply commensurate with the violent offence in question. They are sentences which are, by definition, "such longer term as in the opinion of the court is necessary to protect the public from serious harm from the offender".

In our judgment, in the absence of the application of section 2(2)(b), the worrying features of this case would have justified a commensurate sentence in the region of six or seven years, even after credit had been given for the pleas of guilty and the other factors which were before the court. We consider that there is some force in Miss English's submission that it seems a little odd that the final sentence of three years was made consecutive to the other robbery offences. As we have observed, the appellant was on bail twice over throughout the robberies of the minicab drivers and had not been arrested for any of them until after the final attempted robbery.

We have given due consideration to the question of protecting the public from serious harm in this case, and we have considered the appropriate structure of the sentences that were passed. We do not fault any of the periods of imprisonment that were imposed for individual offences. However, we have come to the conclusion that, in all the circumstances of this case, allowing for the matters which are the concern of section 2(2)(b), the appropriate total sentence was one of ten years' imprisonment rather than thirteen. What we shall do is quash the consecutive element of the sentence of three years passed on the fifth indictment and substitute for it a concurrent sentence of three years' imprisonment, thus producing a total sentence of ten years. To that extent this appeal is allowed.