Edwards, R. v

Consecutive sentences for offences arising from one incident should not normally be imposed. They may nevertheless be justified by exceptional circumstances, especially where the offences are different in kind, contain separate elements of criminality, and involve cumulative rather than coincidental culpability.

Where consecutive terms are imposed, the sentencing court must review the aggregate under the principle of totality. It must reduce the aggregate only if required to make the overall sentence just and appropriate. Serious violence against a highly vulnerable victim and a separate theft may properly attract consecutive terms.

The appellant pleaded guilty at the Crown Court at Southampton to assault occasioning actual bodily harm and theft. He had entered the room of a gravely ill hostel resident, assaulted him, and stole £1,060 which the victim had saved for a mobility scooter.

On 26 November 2008, the judge imposed three years’ imprisonment for the assault and two years’ imprisonment for the theft, consecutively. A previously suspended six-week sentence was activated consecutively. The appellant appealed the two new sentences, contending that consecutive terms were wrong in principle and that the five-year aggregate offended totality.

1. The appeal against sentence was dismissed. The sentencing judge was entitled to impose consecutive sentences for the assault and theft.

2. The ordinary approach, illustrated by R v Jones (1986) 2 Cr.App.R (S) 152 and R v Skinner (1986) 8 Cr.App.R (S) 166, is that offences arising from one single incident should not normally receive consecutive terms. That approach is not absolute. As explained in R v Noble [2003] 1 Cr.App.R (S) 65, exceptional circumstances may justify them, particularly where different offences have been committed.

3. The present offences had distinct elements and involved cumulative culpability. The appellant inflicted gratuitous and renewed violence on a very vulnerable victim, then separately stole a substantial sum urgently needed by that victim. The case was analogous to decisions approving consecutive sentences for burglary and violence against the householder during the same incident, including R v Bunch and R v Jones (15 December 1975).

4. Totality required review of the five-year aggregate. It was nevertheless just and appropriate. The court took account of the victim’s vulnerability, the gravity of the violence and theft, relevant aggravating convictions, commission while subject to a suspended sentence, and the limited credit properly available for pleas entered on the trial date.

5. The fact that the conduct should originally have been charged as robbery did not assist the appellant. Even on the hypothetical basis of a robbery conviction, a five-year sentence would not have been manifestly excessive. The sentences were neither wrong in principle nor manifestly excessive in total.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): dismissed the appellant’s appeal against the sentences for assault occasioning actual bodily harm and theft.
• Crown Court at Southampton: on 26 November 2008 imposed three years’ imprisonment for assault occasioning actual bodily harm and two years’ imprisonment for theft, consecutively. It also activated a six-week suspended sentence consecutively.