R v Z

A sentencing court may impose consecutive terms for separate serious drug conspiracies where this is required to reflect the offender’s total criminality. The fact that offences are connected does not require concurrent sentences.

Credit for assistance to the authorities depends on its practical value, including whether it stops serious criminal activity or identifies serious offenders, and on the risk assumed by the offender. The Court of Appeal will ordinarily not reduce a sentence for assistance supplied after sentence. It may do so exceptionally where the true value of earlier assistance could not then be appreciated or materially exceeds what was reasonably expected.

Z appealed an aggregate sentence of 18 years’ imprisonment imposed in the Crown Court. The sentence concerned three separately tried conspiracies to supply substantial quantities of class A and class B drugs.

He was convicted after trial of conspiracy to supply ecstasy. He later pleaded guilty, at the starts of the respective trials, to conspiracies involving cocaine, amphetamines, cannabis and cannabis resin. A seven-year term for cannabis resin was ordered to run consecutively to the principal concurrent sentences.

Before sentence, Z gave information leading to the recovery of firearms and ammunition. Further information was supplied after sentence. The appeal raised whether the consecutive term was principled, whether adequate credit had been given for the pre-sentence assistance, and whether the later information could reduce the sentence.

1. The appeal was dismissed. The sentencing judge was entitled to impose a total sentence reflecting the full criminality across the three indictments. The earlier sentence for the first conspiracy was proper. Given the further serious offences and the very late guilty pleas, a consecutive sentence for the cannabis-resin conspiracy was neither improper nor wrong in principle.

2. The court upheld the credit allowed for the information supplied before sentence. Applying the common-law principles summarised in R v A and B [1999] 1 Cr App R(S) 52, the greatest reduction is reserved for information that is accurate, useful and previously unknown, and that stops serious crime or brings serious offenders to justice. Personal danger to the informant is also material. Although the recovery of illegal firearms was important, Z did not identify those connected with them, the information did not lead to arrests or establish criminal use of the weapons, and the risk to him was low. The judge was therefore correct not to allow anything approaching the maximum discount.

3. The statutory scheme in sections 73 and 74 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 did not apply. Both the offences and the sentences pre-dated its commencement. The court accordingly applied the common-law principles.

4. The further information supplied after sentence could not be taken into account. The Court of Appeal is ordinarily a reviewing court and should not encourage offenders to retain information for use on appeal. The exceptional jurisdiction identified in R v A and B [1999] 1 Cr App R(S) 52 did not arise: the later information was an attempt to improve Z’s position after sentence, rather than evidence that the pre-sentence assistance had acquired an unexpectedly greater value.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): dismissed Z’s appeal against the aggregate sentence of 18 years’ imprisonment.

• Crown Court: sentenced Z in October 2005 for conspiracy to supply ecstasy and in March 2006 for the remaining drug conspiracies, producing an aggregate term of 18 years’ imprisonment.