REGINA v JORDAN DAVID NICHOLSON

When sentencing connected drug and weapons offences, a court may treat the weapons as aggravating the drug offending and impose concurrent sentences to reflect that overall criminality. It must nevertheless apply totality consistently. A consecutive sentence for one weapon count is erroneous where it duplicates the aggravating effect already reflected in the principal sentences and there is no reason for a hybrid approach.

The overall sentence must reflect the separate course of drug supply, personal mitigation, guilty pleas and relevant custody conditions. Credit for a plea may properly be reduced by an unrealistic basis advanced at a Newton hearing.

The appellant pleaded guilty at Great Grimsby Crown Court to offering to supply cocaine, possessing cocaine with intent to supply, possessing a knuckleduster, possessing four knives, and possessing MACE spray. Following a Newton hearing, the Recorder imposed a total of six years and six months’ imprisonment, including a consecutive six-month sentence for the knife count.

The appellant appealed against sentence with the leave of the single judge. His grounds challenged the uplift for the drug offending, the weapons sentences, the categorisation of the MACE offence, credit for plea, totality and overall excess. The central issue was whether the sentencing exercise had produced a sentence that was excessive or inconsistent with totality.

1. Appeal allowed in part. The court quashed the six-year sentences on the two drug counts and substituted concurrent sentences of five years and three months. It altered the six-month sentence for possessing four knives from consecutive to concurrent. The total term was therefore reduced to five years and three months’ imprisonment.

2. The Recorder was entitled in principle to treat the offensive and prohibited weapons as part and parcel of the overall drug offending. Drug dealing is inherently dangerous and often involves weapons. Treating the weapons as aggravating the principal drug offences, while generally imposing concurrent sentences for the weapons counts, was not wrong in principle.

3. The error was the consecutive sentence for the four knives. The Recorder had already used the weapons offending to aggravate the drug sentences. There was no reason to adopt a hybrid approach by also imposing a consecutive sentence for one weapons count. That approach failed to give proper effect to totality.

4. The two drug offences, considered without the weapons, warranted concurrent sentences slightly above the applicable starting point, subject to personal mitigation. Once the weapons were properly accommodated as aggravating features, the proper overall sentence for the drug offending before plea credit was six years’ imprisonment.

5. A reduction of nine months was appropriate for the guilty pleas and the impact of Covid custody conditions. The appellant’s unrealistic stance at the Newton hearing justified limited rather than full credit.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): Allowed the sentence appeal in part and substituted a total term of five years and three months’ imprisonment: [2022] EWCA Crim 769.
• Crown Court at Great Grimsby: On 23 December 2021, following guilty pleas and a Newton hearing, imposed a total term of six years and six months’ imprisonment.