Huggins & Ors, R v

For unlawful act manslaughter, sentence must reflect both culpability and the harm caused or foreseeably risked. Where a planned group attack involves knives deliberately brought to the scene to injure the victim, with a high foreseeable risk of death, culpability may be at or near the highest level for involuntary manslaughter.

The fact that death was not intended does not remove the need to give proper weight to the death caused. Manslaughter must not be sentenced as murder, but cases close to murder in seriousness must receive commensurately severe sentences. Features which raise the murder starting point under Schedule 21 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 are also highly relevant aggravating features when sentencing grave lesser knife offences.

Following a planned attack in which Wa’ays Dhaye was fatally stabbed, Kaneel Huggins and Antwon Clarke were acquitted of murder but convicted of manslaughter. Khianni Gordon was convicted of murder. All three had knowingly participated in a planned knife attack, but Gordon intended really serious harm whereas Huggins and Clarke intended some harm.

At the Crown Court at Reading, Huggins and Clarke each received nine years’ detention for manslaughter. Gordon received life imprisonment with a 19-year minimum term, after the judge found that Paragraph 5A of Schedule 21 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 applied. The Attorney General referred the manslaughter sentences as unduly lenient under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. Gordon sought permission to appeal his sentence on grounds including age, maturity and disparity.

1. The Attorney General’s reference was allowed. The nine-year detention sentences imposed on Huggins and Clarke for manslaughter were unduly lenient. They were quashed and replaced with 15 years’ detention. Huggins’s consecutive 12-month sentence for perverting the course of public justice remained unchanged.
2. Under section 143(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, seriousness depends principally on culpability and the harm caused, intended or foreseeably risked. In unlawful act manslaughter, death is the highest level of actual harm and must receive increased weight: Attorney General’s Reference Nos 60, 62 and 63 of 2009 (Appleby) [2009] EWCA Crim 2693.
3. This was not a low-culpability death resulting from a single blow. The attack was planned and cold-blooded. Knives were obtained and brought to the scene for the purpose of stabbing the victim. The offenders ambushed a lone and vulnerable victim at night, and death was highly foreseeable. Those features placed culpability at, or approaching, the highest level for involuntary manslaughter, notwithstanding that Huggins and Clarke intended only some harm.
4. Paragraph 5A of Schedule 21 applied directly to Gordon’s murder sentence. Its knife-related features were also material aggravating features when sentencing the manslaughter offenders, consistently with R v Odegbune and ors [2013] EWCA 711. The court took account of Huggins’s and Clarke’s youth and maturity, but held that those matters did not justify sentences that failed to reflect the gravity of the offending.
5. The court did not equate manslaughter with murder. It applied the principle in Appleby that manslaughter cannot be sentenced as murder, while recognising that some manslaughter cases are much closer to murder than others. The substituted determinate sentences nevertheless preserved the substantial distinction between the sentencing regimes.
6. Gordon’s application for permission to appeal sentence was refused. His age and maturity had been adequately considered. The difference between his minimum term and the determinate sentences reflected the different offences of conviction, not objectionable disparity.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): On an Attorney General’s reference under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, the court held the manslaughter sentences unduly lenient and substituted 15 years’ detention for each of Huggins and Clarke. It refused Gordon permission to appeal his sentence: [2016] EWCA Crim 1715.
• Crown Court at Reading: On 13 May 2016, Huggins and Clarke were each sentenced to nine years’ detention for manslaughter. Gordon was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder with a 19-year minimum term.