Wooff, R v

When sentencing for a third Class A drug-trafficking offence, a court should first determine the guideline sentence without reference to the statutory minimum. It must then apply Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000, section 110, unless particular circumstances relating to the offences or offender would make that result unjust.

The guilty-plea reduction available under section 144 must inform that assessment. The inquiry is fact-sensitive, and a pre-sentence report will usually assist, but its absence does not itself invalidate sentencing. A markedly more severe sentence than the guideline outcome may be relevant, while the statutory deterrent purpose remains material. The age of qualifying convictions and a long-standing drug addiction do not, without more, establish injustice.

The appellant pleaded guilty in the Crown Court at Southampton to two offences of possessing Class A drugs with intent to supply. His convictions in 1997 and 2008 for Class A drug supply engaged the minimum-sentence regime in section 110 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000.

The sentencing judge declined to order a pre-sentence report. Having treated the appellant as a significant-role street dealer, the judge imposed concurrent sentences of six years’ imprisonment after allowing credit for the guilty pleas.

The appellant appealed on the grounds that a report should have been obtained and that the age and limited known detail of the trigger convictions, together with his addiction, made the statutory minimum unjust. By the appeal hearing, the court had a pre-appeal report and further information about the earlier Class A offences.

1. Appeal dismissed. The court held that the concurrent six-year sentences were neither wrong in principle nor excessive. Section 110 required a minimum seven-year term, subject to the guilty-plea reduction permitted by section 144 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

2. The correct sequence was that stated in R v Silvera [2013] EWCA Crim 1764. The court must first identify the appropriate guideline sentence and then consider whether the statutory minimum applies. The potential 20 per cent reduction for a guilty plea had to be considered when deciding whether the statutory minimum would be unjust, consistently with Attorney General's Reference (R v Marland) [2018] EWCA Crim 1770.

3. The guideline sentence after a trial would have been at least six years. After the late guilty plea, the appropriate non-statutory range was about five years and one month to five and a half years. The actual six-year sentence was not markedly more severe, particularly given the deterrent purpose of section 110.

4. A pre-sentence report should usually be obtained where the issue is whether particular circumstances make the statutory minimum unjust. But its absence is not automatically fatal, as R v Densham (Neil James) [2014] EWCA Crim 2552 shows. The appeal court had the report and the further available information, so it was in substance able to decide the issue on the basis the appellant said should have been before the sentencing judge.

5. The appellant's prolonged addiction, the age of the qualifying convictions, and the further detail of those convictions disclosed no particular circumstances making the statutory minimum unjust. The age of a qualifying conviction is relevant but insufficient by itself, as the authorities summarised in Attorney General's Reference (R v Marland) establish. The sentencing judge had been mistaken in thinking that section 110 applied to the 2008 sentencing, but was entitled to find that the appellant had then become exposed to the statutory minimum on any further qualifying offence.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — dismissed the sentence appeal and upheld concurrent six-year terms of imprisonment ([2019] EWCA Crim 2249).
• Crown Court at Southampton — on 18 July 2019, following guilty pleas to two Class A drug-possession-with-intent-to-supply offences, imposed six years’ imprisonment on each count concurrently.