Hancock, Re

A court order must be obeyed unless and until it is varied or discharged. The fact that an order may have been wrongly made provides no defence to contempt. Serious and repeated breaches, particularly those affecting a child or involving intimidation in court, may justify immediate custody. A custodial sentence may nevertheless be suspended where that best promotes the prevention of further offending, while preserving the deterrent and punitive purposes of sentencing.

Suffolk County Council applied to commit Kaine Hancock for contempt arising from breaches of injunctions made by Eleanor King J on 3 April 2014. The injunctions prohibited publication of a DVD or material on it, disclosure of the identity of Mr Hancock’s son, and harassment or intimidation of council employees. A further allegation concerned threatening conduct towards a witness in the court building.

After the court rejected a submission of no case to answer on the publication allegation, Mr Hancock pleaded guilty to all five matters. The court then determined the appropriate sentence, including the significance of his previous conviction for similar contempts, the absence of physical violence, his prompt apologies and psychiatric evidence.

1. Contempt established. The submission that there was no case to answer on the publication allegation was rejected. The evidence was capable of establishing, to the criminal standard, both the necessary linkage between the YouTube video and the prohibited DVD material and Mr Hancock’s responsibility for publication.
2. Obligation to obey orders. An order must be obeyed even if the respondent considers it wrongly made or expressed too broadly. The proper remedy is to apply for the order to be varied or discharged. That issue could not constitute a defence and could provide, at most, fleeting mitigation.
3. Sentencing approach. The publication of material identifying the child and material from the DVD was serious, although the absence of any demonstrated impact on the child was a powerful mitigating feature. The verbal abuse of a council employee and the threat to a witness were aggravated by their occurrence in a court building. The conduct was nevertheless unplanned, unpremeditated, non-violent and followed by prompt apologies.
4. Taking account of the sentencing principles in Hale v Tanner [2000] EWCA Civ 5570, the comparator sentence in Her Majesty's Attorney General v Harkins [2013] EWHC 1455, the statutory maximum and the previous similar conviction, custody was unavoidable. The court imposed six months on each of the first two counts and three months on each of counts 4 and 5, all concurrent. Count 3 was not separately sentenced.
5. All sentences were suspended for 15 months on condition that there was no further breach or contempt. Suspension was appropriate because preventing repetition, particularly in a case involving a child, was the court’s primary objective. Any further breach could activate the suspended sentences in addition to punishment for the new contempt.