REGINA v RYAN BRENNAN

When sentencing an offender with a mental disorder, the court must assess the disorder’s effect on culpability, including whether it contributed to alcohol or drug use by way of self-medication. It is insufficient to treat intoxication as the principal cause without properly reflecting the psychiatric evidence and its causal contribution. Where offences form part and parcel of the same incident of violence, totality may require concurrent sentences, particularly where psychiatric mitigation bears materially on culpability. A custodial reduction may require a corresponding adjustment to driving disqualification.

Following guilty pleas, the appellant was sentenced by Liverpool Crown Court to five years’ imprisonment for dangerous driving, affray, making a threat to kill and aggravating vehicle taking. The sentences included a consecutive 12-month term for affray. He was also disqualified from driving for five years and six months and required to take an extended retest.

He appealed against sentence, arguing that insufficient weight had been given to his adjustment disorder, substance use, remorse, family circumstances and totality. The central issues were whether the mental-disorder guideline had been correctly applied, whether the affray sentence should have been concurrent, and what consequential adjustment should be made to the driving disqualification.

1. Appeal allowed in part. The three-year sentence for making threats to kill remained unchanged. The concurrent sentences for the two driving offences were correct. The 12-month sentence for affray was made concurrent, reducing the total term of imprisonment to four years.
2. The Recorder had generally applied the relevant Sentencing Council guidelines, considered the psychiatric evidence and available mitigation, and paid proper regard to totality. However, the appellant was suffering from an adjustment disorder, his mental state had deteriorated under stress, and his consumption of alcohol and drugs was partly occasioned by that disorder and stress. The Recorder’s conclusion that the appellant was principally culpable because of the drink and drugs did not sufficiently reflect the guideline’s treatment of psychiatric features and self-medication.
3. The affray was part and parcel of the same incident of violence as the other offending. There was therefore a strong argument for concurrency. More importantly, in light of the psychiatric evidence, concurrency was the correct approach. The seriousness of the threats-to-kill offence provided no basis for reducing its sentence.
4. The consequential driving disqualification was reduced by applying the approach in R v Needham [2016] EWCA Crim 455. The court inferred that the Recorder had calculated the original period by allowing two and a half years for actual imprisonment and three further years. Applying the same approach, the disqualification was reduced to five years, with an extended retest at the end of that period.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): allowed the sentence appeal in part, made the affray sentence concurrent, reduced the total term to four years, and reduced the driving disqualification to five years.
• Liverpool Crown Court: following guilty pleas, imposed a total sentence of five years’ imprisonment and a five-year-six-month driving disqualification with an extended retest.