Squires & Ors, R v

In assessing culpability under an applicable sentencing guideline, an offender’s presence with others does not make a sole assault a higher-culpability group offence where those others did not participate in that assault. The gravity of the harm caused may nevertheless justify moving the starting point towards the top of the applicable range.

Sentences for closely connected offences arising from one short incident must also reflect totality. Concurrent sentences may be required where consecutive terms would make the overall sentence excessive.

The three offenders pleaded guilty in the Crown Court at Leeds to offences arising from violence at Leeds railway station. Higgins punched Lewis Longstaff, causing grave and lasting head injuries. All three offenders participated in an assault on James Pearson. Squires also committed an assault by beating on Longstaff.

The Recorder imposed total terms of 10 months’ youth detention on Squires, nine months on Pickering, and three years on Higgins. Squires and Higgins appealed against sentence. Pickering sought leave to appeal. The central issues were the correct guideline categorisation, the individual offenders’ culpability, the appropriate sentence for the joint assault, and concurrency.

1. The court allowed the appeals to the extent stated. It granted Pickering leave to appeal and reduced each offender’s total sentence.
2. Higgins’s offence under Offences Against the Person Act 1861, section 20, was a category 2 offence. Although Higgins was with the other offenders, they were not participating when he delivered the punch causing Longstaff’s injury. Their presence did not therefore make the offence one of higher culpability. The predictable head injuries and catastrophic consequences justified a starting point towards the top of the category 2 range. After credit for the guilty plea, the sentence of two years and three months was stern but not manifestly excessive.
3. The section 47 assault on Pearson was a group attack, fuelled by alcohol, against one victim in a public place and witnessed by members of the public. Immediate custody was justified. Taking account also of mitigation, the proper sentence before plea credit was eight months’ custody. With 25 per cent credit, each offender’s sentence for that count was six months.
4. The section 47 sentence imposed on Higgins should run concurrently with his section 20 sentence. Squires’s sentence for assault by beating should likewise run concurrently with his section 47 sentence. Those offences formed part of the same short incident, and concurrency gave proper effect to totality.
5. Squires’s sentences were quashed and replaced by six months’ youth detention on count 2 and one month concurrent on count 3. Pickering’s nine-month sentence was replaced by six months. Higgins’s nine-month sentence on count 2 was replaced by six months concurrent, leaving his two years and three months on count 1 undisturbed.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — in [2019] EWCA Crim 1829, the court granted Pickering leave to appeal and allowed the sentence appeals to the extent of reducing and varying the sentences.
• Crown Court at Leeds — on 19 July 2019, the Recorder imposed youth-detention sentences following guilty pleas.