R v Taylor Rowland

When sentencing multiple serious offences, the principle of totality requires the overall sentence to reflect the offender’s total culpability. This remains so where each individual sentence and the categorisation of each offence are unobjectionable.

The court must make appropriate allowance for relevant personal circumstances, including youth and immaturity at the time of offending, an untreated mental disorder affecting the offending, early guilty pleas and full admissions. Where consecutive terms produce a manifestly excessive aggregate sentence, the court may correct the totality error by ordering otherwise proper individual sentences to run concurrently.

The appellant pleaded guilty to eight counts of rape committed against B during a relationship lasting about eight years. The offending began when the appellant was about 16 and B was about 15. It involved repeated non-consensual and increasingly violent sexual activity.

On 11 November 2021, the Crown Court at Newcastle upon Tyne imposed individual sentences ranging from four to 12 years and eight months. It ordered the sentence on count 7 to run consecutively to that on count 1, producing a total of 17 years and eight months’ imprisonment.

The appellant appealed against sentence. The central issue was whether, despite unobjectionable individual terms, the consecutive structure failed to give proper effect to totality and to relevant mitigation.

1. Appeal allowed. The court held that the aggregate sentence of 17 years and eight months was manifestly excessive. It quashed the order requiring the sentences on counts 1 and 7 to run consecutively.
2. The categorisation of the offending and each individual sentence were unobjectionable. The error lay in the structure of the sentences. The principle of totality required the court to assess whether the aggregate term properly reflected the offender’s overall culpability.
3. Relevant considerations included the appellant’s age and immaturity throughout the offending, his untreated personality disorder which directly affected the offending, his early guilty pleas, and his full and frank admissions. His admissions also included additional offending and spared B a contested trial. These matters did not diminish the grave and enduring effect of the offending on B.
4. The proper course was not to alter any individual term, but to order all sentences to run concurrently. The resulting sentence was 12 years and eight months’ imprisonment. The restraining order and other ancillary orders remained undisturbed.
5. Under articles 3 and 4 of the Release of Prisoners (Alteration of Relevant Proportion of Sentence) Order 2020, rape was an offence listed in Schedule 15 to the Sexual Offences Act 2003. The appellant was therefore required to serve two-thirds of the substituted sentence before becoming eligible for consideration by the Parole Board for release.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): Allowed the appeal against sentence and replaced the consecutive structure with concurrent sentences, reducing the total term to 12 years and eight months’ imprisonment: [2022] EWCA Crim 931.
• Crown Court at Newcastle upon Tyne: On 11 November 2021, imposed sentences for eight counts of rape totalling 17 years and eight months’ imprisonment through consecutive sentences on counts 1 and 7.