Abuhamza, R. v

In sentencing for manslaughter arising from prolonged child ill-treatment, the mitigatory effect of diminished responsibility depends on its timing and extent. It has little weight where deliberate starvation and violence began before any substantial impairment of responsibility and continued until the child’s death.

The sentence may properly reflect both forms of cruelty and the harm inflicted on additional child victims. Comparable sentencing decisions provide a broad range, but the sentence must be assessed against all the aggravating and mitigating features of the particular offending.

Abuhamza and Gordon appealed sentences imposed at Birmingham Crown Court after convictions for the manslaughter of Gordon’s seven-year-old daughter and cruelty to her five other children.

Both appellants ultimately pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility. Abuhamza received imprisonment for public protection with a minimum term of seven and a half years. Gordon received 15 years’ imprisonment. They contended that the judge’s starting point was excessive and gave insufficient weight to their mental illnesses and to the absence of an intention to kill or cause really serious injury.

The central issue was whether the sentences were manifestly excessive.

1. The appeals were dismissed. There was no proper basis to interfere with either sentence.

2. The court accepted that the appellants were to be sentenced for manslaughter, rather than murder, and that neither had intended death or really serious injury. That did not diminish the exceptional gravity of the offending. The child died after deliberate starvation in a home containing ample food, and the children had also suffered sustained violent and degrading treatment.

3. The substantial impairment of responsibility had arisen only near the end of the offending. Abuhamza’s schizophrenia substantially impaired him for about two weeks before the death, when he failed to comprehend that the child was dying. Gordon’s severe depression substantially impaired her for about a month before the death. The prolonged starvation and other cruelty had begun before either appellant’s responsibility was substantially impaired. The impairment therefore carried very limited weight in the sentencing assessment.

4. The judge was entitled to treat as grave aggravating features both the deliberate starvation and the violence, and the serious cruelty inflicted on five surviving children in addition to the conduct culminating in the child’s death. Gordon had been under Abuhamza’s malign influence, but was not his victim and had failed to protect her children during a period when she could have done so.

5. The court considered the broad sentencing range in R v Watts [2001] EWCA Crim 1427, R v Wright [2002] EWCA Crim 1656, R v Onley [2004] EWCA Crim 1383, and R v H [2009] EWCA Crim 397. It also observed that Abuhamza’s very late guilty plea might not have warranted the full reduction allowed by the sentencing judge. The imposed sentences were nevertheless appropriate.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — dismissed the sentence appeals on 1 March 2011: [2011] EWCA Crim 642.
• Birmingham Crown Court — on 12 March 2010, imposed imprisonment for public protection with a minimum term of seven and a half years on Abuhamza, and 15 years’ imprisonment on Gordon, for manslaughter and child-cruelty offences.