Darren Lestat Collins v Regina

Sentencing for misconduct in public office must reflect the degree of abuse of public trust. Deterrence is important, and serious misuse of police-held information or conduct which imperils a criminal investigation may require severe and immediate custody.

The abuse of trust inherent in the offence does not prevent a court from treating a particularly serious abuse as aggravating. Nor must an actual miscarriage of justice occur: a serious risk to the integrity of a forensic investigation can itself increase culpability. Unauthorised images of deceased victims cause distinct harm by denying dignity to the victims and their families; dissemination aggravates that harm.

The court considered a sentence appeal by Darren Collins and renewed applications for leave to appeal against sentence by Jamie Lewis and Deniz Jaffer. All had pleaded guilty to misconduct in public office.

Collins, a civilian digital forensics specialist employed by Staffordshire Police, had accessed and copied a very large number of police images, including images of murder victims and post-mortem examinations. He received three years’ imprisonment in the Crown Court at Birmingham.

Lewis and Jaffer were police officers guarding the scene of the murder of two sisters. They left their posts, took images of the bodies and shared them with colleagues; Jaffer also sent an image to a member of the public. Each received two years and nine months’ imprisonment at the Central Criminal Court.

The central issues were whether the sentences were wrong in principle or manifestly excessive, including whether trust had been double-counted and whether operational impact required an actual miscarriage of justice.

1. The court dismissed Collins’s appeal and refused Lewis’s and Jaffer’s applications for leave to appeal. None of the sentences was manifestly excessive or wrong in principle.

2. The sentencing framework for misconduct in public office must reflect the seriousness of the abuse of public trust. The court endorsed the non-exhaustive principles in Attorney General’s Reference (No. 30 of 2010) (Mark Edward Bohannan), [2010] EWCA Crim 226, including the importance of punishment and deterrence and the increased gravity where misconduct affects police operations. Serious misuse of police-held electronic data also threatens public confidence in policing and the administration of justice. The court drew support from R v Kassim, [2005] EWCA Crim 1020.

3. Collins’s status as a civilian employee did not reduce his culpability. His forensic role gave him privileged access to data used to investigate crime and bring offenders to justice. In those circumstances, there was no material difference between the public trust placed in him and that placed in a police officer. Given the lengthy offending period and the scale of the images accessed, the three-year sentence was justified.

4. For Lewis and Jaffer, the general abuse of trust was an element of the offence, but its degree remained relevant to culpability. A sentencing judge may therefore impose a more severe sentence for a particularly grave breach of trust without impermissible double-counting.

5. An actual miscarriage of justice is not required before misconduct has an operational impact. The officers’ deliberate risk of compromising a double-murder scene was an acute breach of trust. Their conduct enabled the murderer to advance a false defence at trial and thereby imperilled the administration of justice, even though the jury rejected that defence.

6. The officers also caused serious harm by denying the deceased and their family dignity and respect. Sharing the images with colleagues had a corrosive effect within the police service. Jaffer’s sharing of an image with a civilian was an additional aggravating feature. The sentencing judge had allowed for mitigation, but the seriousness of the breaches and the need for deterrence outweighed it.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — in Darren Lestat Collins v Regina, [2022] EWCA Crim 742, Collins’s sentence appeal was dismissed and Lewis’s and Jaffer’s applications for leave to appeal against sentence were refused.
• Crown Court at Birmingham — HHJ Henderson sentenced Collins to three years’ imprisonment on 7 January 2022 following his guilty plea to misconduct in public office.
• Central Criminal Court — the Recorder of London sentenced Lewis and Jaffer to two years and nine months’ imprisonment each on 6 December 2021 following their guilty pleas to misconduct in public office.