Griffiths & Ors v R.

Criminal Justice Act 2003, Schedule 21 is a flexible sentencing framework. Its starting points and examples must not be applied mechanically or by arithmetical additions for separate features. The examples of murder of particularly high seriousness in paragraph 5(2) are not exhaustive.

A murder committed to preserve a major criminal enterprise, enforce discipline within it and accompanied by sustained torture may be comparable in seriousness with those examples, even if it is not literally a murder done for gain. Whether that is so depends on the scale of the enterprise and the circumstances of the killing. Sentencers must avoid double counting features already reflected in the starting point, give proper weight to the absence of an intent to kill, and apply totality and individual mitigation.

The four appellants were convicted at the Crown Court at Sheffield of murder following the prolonged ill-treatment and eventual killing of a drug-business associate. They were also convicted of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by dismembering and disposing of his body. Lee and Thomas Griffiths were additionally convicted of conspiracy to supply class A drugs.

The trial judge imposed mandatory life sentences and fixed minimum terms by adopting a 30-year starting point under Schedule 21 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003. He treated the killing as comparable with murder for gain because it was committed to protect and enforce a substantial drug enterprise. The appeals challenged the starting point and the resulting minimum terms.

The central question was whether that combination of criminal-enterprise enforcement and sustained violence could properly be treated as a murder of particularly high seriousness.

1. The sentence appeals were allowed to a limited extent. The court substituted minimum terms of 30 years for Lee Griffiths, 23 years for Luke Griffiths, and 25 years each for Thomas Griffiths and Mark Jackson.

2. Schedule 21 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 could not be used mechanically. Its listed starting points and examples were a framework for achieving substantial justice, not a tariff to which years should be arithmetically added or subtracted. Paragraph 9 permitted a minimum term of any length where the full aggravating and mitigating circumstances justified it. The court drew support from R v Height & Anderson [2008] EWCA Crim 2500, R v Peters and others [2005] EWCA Crim 605, and R v Jones [2005] EWCA Crim 3414.

3. The judge had not wrongly characterised the murder as one done for gain. He had instead treated it as comparable with the examples in paragraph 5(2), which was permissible because those examples were not exhaustive. The sustained torture and killing furthered a large-scale drug enterprise by enforcing loyalty and discipline. A murder in the course of a criminal enterprise is not invariably of particularly high seriousness. The scale of the enterprise and circumstances of the killing remain decisive. On these facts, the 30-year starting point was justified.

4. All defendants could receive that starting point because each knowingly participated in a killing undertaken for that purpose. Their differing positions nevertheless required individual adjustment. The victim’s vulnerability and the sustained ill-treatment had already contributed to the selection of the starting point and could not justify a further increase. Dismemberment and disposal of the body aggravated the offence. The absence of an intent to kill mitigated it and had been undervalued by the judge.

5. The antecedent drug conspiracy had not itself been absorbed into the murder sentence, but totality made a further addition inappropriate once a minimum term of 30 years had been reached. Relative culpability, age, lack of relevant convictions, previous violence, family influence and the absence of drug-conspiracy convictions required the differing substituted terms.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): Sentence appeals allowed to a limited extent; the minimum terms were substituted as set out in [2012] EWCA Crim 2822.
• Crown Court at Sheffield: All four defendants were convicted of murder and sentenced to mandatory life imprisonment. The trial judge fixed minimum terms after applying Schedule 21 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003.