Hussain, R. v

For a plea to a lesser offence which is a permissible alternative on a Crown Court indictment, an offender obtains early guilty-plea credit only by making an unequivocal indication in the prescribed way. The offender must enter the alternative plea. Informal discussions between advocates, or an offer rejected by the prosecution, do not suffice.

An error concerning the level of guilty-plea credit will not justify appellate intervention where any additional credit would not make the resulting sentence manifestly excessive.

The appellant pleaded guilty to inflicting grievous bodily harm contrary to section 20 of the Offences Against the Person Act. He had originally been charged with the section 18 offence. The Crown Court at Luton sentenced him to 27 months’ imprisonment on 3 March 2020.

Before the plea, there had been discussions about pleas to lesser offences. A proposed plea to section 47 was unacceptable to the Crown and was not an alternative to the section 18 charge. A later proposed plea to section 20 was also rejected. On arraignment the appellant pleaded not guilty to section 18, without entering a section 20 plea.

The appeal challenged the 10% guilty-plea reduction. The issue was whether the sentencing judge had erred in treating the plea as entered only on the intended trial date.

1. Appeal dismissed. Sir Nicholas Blake held that the sentencing judge had made no error of principle in allowing only 10% credit for the guilty plea.

2. Under section F3 of the Sentencing Council’s definitive guideline, an earlier indication of a plea to a lesser or different offence must be unequivocal. Where the offered offence is a permissible alternative on the indictment, the offender is not treated as having made such an indication unless the plea has actually been entered.

3. The appellant could have pleaded not guilty to the section 18 count but guilty to the section 20 alternative at arraignment. The Crown’s earlier refusal to accept a section 20 plea did not make that course a nullity. Discussions between advocates and the earlier proposed section 47 plea did not amount to an unequivocal section 20 plea.

4. The court followed R v West [2019] EWCA Crim 497 as authority concerning what constitutes an unequivocal plea. It distinguished R v Hardy [2020] 2 Cr.App.R (S) 37, where the facts differed, although that case also showed that a misapplication of guilty-plea credit does not require intervention if the sentence is not manifestly excessive.

5. In any event, even allowing for the possibility that counsel’s advice had contributed to the failure to enter the alternative plea, greater credit would not have reduced the 27-month sentence to one which was not manifestly excessive. The sentence therefore stood.

1. Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): dismissed the appeal against sentence and upheld the 27-month sentence: [2020] EWCA Crim 1514.

2. Crown Court at Luton: on 3 March 2020, imposed 27 months’ imprisonment following a guilty plea to the section 20 offence.