Yarboi, R v

Sentencing guidance for less sophisticated commercial robbery must be applied flexibly. The category can include pre-planning, targeted victims, disguises and multiple offenders. The boundary with professionally planned commercial robbery is not fixed.

However, planning must not eclipse the matters which chiefly distinguish robbery from theft: the force used or threatened, the victim’s fear, and any weapon. Detailed getaway arrangements, without more, will not ordinarily justify a starting point vastly above the guideline range where force is minimal and there is no weapon, threat or group intimidation. A reduced suspended sentence for unrelated offending may properly run consecutively to the sentence for the new robbery.

Three appellants were sentenced in the Crown Court by Her Honour Judge Tapping for a planned robbery of £11,530 from a cash-in-transit security guard. Essuman-Dadson snatched the cashbox; Mensah drove the first getaway car; and Yarboi drove a second getaway car. No weapon was used, and the force used in taking the cashbox was minimal.

Essuman-Dadson and Mensah pleaded guilty. Yarboi was convicted after trial and was also in breach of a suspended sentence for unrelated cannabis offending. Each appellant challenged sentence, principally contending that the judge had wrongly declined to apply the Sentencing Guidelines Council guidance for less sophisticated commercial robbery.

1. Appeals allowed. The court quashed all three sentences. It substituted four years and ten months’ imprisonment for Yarboi, three years and five months’ imprisonment for Mensah, and two years and three months’ detention in a young offender institution for Essuman-Dadson.

2. The judge was entitled to find that the robbery involved more than minimal planning. The removal of numberplates and provision of a second, clean getaway car made the case unusual. Yet cases within the category of less sophisticated commercial robbery can involve pre-planning, targeting, disguises and several offenders. The category is not confined to opportunistic or unsophisticated offending, and its boundary with professionally planned robbery is not clear-cut.

3. The judge nevertheless gave insufficient weight to the guidance on assessing seriousness. The principal feature distinguishing robbery from theft is the use or threat of force. Here, only minimal force was used to snatch the container. There was one snatcher, no weapon, no threat of force, no disguise, and no intimidation arising from a group confrontation. Although the planning might place the offence outside the guideline category, it could not justify a starting point of six years, double the top of that category’s range. The proper starting point was four years and six months.

4. Applying that starting point, the court allowed substantially the same reduction for Mensah’s plea and mitigation. It accepted that Essuman-Dadson’s antecedents and bail status would have produced a higher adult contested-trial starting point, but held that the judge’s reduction for his age, early plea and mitigation remained appropriate. His substituted sentence was imposed under section 91 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000.

5. The consecutive activation of four months of Yarboi’s suspended sentence did not offend totality. The earlier sentence concerned different offending, and the judge had already reduced the activated part to reflect completed unpaid work.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division)—Allowed the appeals against sentence and substituted reduced sentences: [2009] EWCA Crim 2760 .
• Crown Court—On 19 June 2009, Her Honour Judge Tapping sentenced Yarboi to six years’ imprisonment plus four consecutive months activated from a suspended sentence, Mensah to four years and six months’ imprisonment, and Essuman-Dadson to three years’ detention in a young offender institution.