Aziz, R. v

For a child convicted of murder, the 12-year starting point under Schedule 21 requires a free-standing sentencing assessment. Aggravating and mitigating features are evaluated flexibly, rather than through arithmetic adjustment, and may justify a substantial minimum term where the offending is exceptionally grave.

A mental disorder which does not reduce culpability may still afford personal mitigation. A court must take it into account in the overall sentencing assessment.

In deciding whether to lift a child defendant’s reporting restriction, the court must balance welfare and privacy against open justice and the public interest. Welfare carries very great weight but does not invariably prevail. Appellate intervention is justified only for an error of principle or a plainly wrong balance.

The applicant, aged 16 when the offences were committed, was convicted at Wolverhampton Crown Court of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl. He received detention during Her Majesty’s pleasure under section 90 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000, with a 19-year minimum term, and a concurrent ten-year sentence for rape.

He sought leave to appeal against the minimum term. He also challenged the trial judge’s excepting direction which lifted the pre-trial anonymity order made under section 45 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. The central issues were whether the minimum term was arguably manifestly excessive and whether the judge had lawfully balanced the applicant’s welfare against open justice.

1. The application for leave to appeal against sentence was refused. The 12-year starting point for a child convicted of murder is a free-standing starting point. It does not prevent a substantial increase where aggravating features justify one. Aggravation and mitigation call for a subtle evaluative judgment, not a rigid arithmetical calculation. The 19-year minimum term did not float free of the statutory starting point and was not arguably manifestly excessive.
2. The seriousness of the planned, sexually motivated and sadistic killing, the rape, the weapon brought to the scene, the victim’s vulnerability, and the disposal of evidence justified the judge’s assessment of high culpability. The court regarded the approach as consistent with R v Markham and Edwards [2017] EWCA Crim 739.
3. The psychiatric evidence did not establish that paranoid schizophrenia significantly reduced culpability. That conclusion was open to the sentencing judge. Nonetheless, the disorder remained mitigating personal circumstance. The five-year reduction for mitigation was properly understood as reflecting it, together with the applicant’s age, background and lack of convictions.
4. The challenge to the excepting direction failed. Under section 45 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, welfare and Article 8 interests must be balanced against open justice, Article 10 interests, deterrence and the community’s legitimate interest in knowing the identity of the perpetrator of exceptionally serious crime. The trial judge had considered the reports and risks to welfare. There was no cogent evidence that identification would cause significant harm or impair treatment or rehabilitation. His balancing exercise disclosed no legal error.
5. A section 45 restriction ends when its subject reaches 18. Section 11 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 could not preserve anonymity where the applicant’s identity had been stated in open court. An exceptional all-person injunction of the Venables type was speculative and unsupported by evidence.
6. The court reconstituted itself as a Divisional Court, lifted the stay on the judicial review claim, dismissed it, and discharged the interim anonymity order. It also advised that section 45 directions should cover all forms of publication, rather than newspapers alone, and that a formal excepting direction should be drawn up.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division)—refused leave to appeal against sentence and, sitting as a Divisional Court, dismissed the judicial review challenge to the excepting direction: [2019] EWCA Crim 1568.
• Crown Court at Wolverhampton—the applicant was convicted of rape and murder, sentenced to detention during Her Majesty’s pleasure with a 19-year minimum term, and received a concurrent ten-year sentence for rape. The trial judge subsequently discharged the section 45 anonymity direction by an excepting direction.