R v Abdullah Mohammed

Old and dissimilar previous convictions should not aggravate sentence where a lengthy offence-free period substantially reduces their relevance. The court must assess both the nature and relevance of the earlier offending and the time elapsed.

An erroneous treatment of antecedents as aggravating does not make a sentence manifestly excessive where the sentencing judge was entitled, on other substantial aggravating features, to impose the sentence within the applicable guideline range.

The appellant was convicted at Reading Crown Court of two offences of being concerned in supplying Class A drugs. He received concurrent sentences of four years’ imprisonment.

Police found him carrying phones and a SIM card connected with a drug-dealing line which had sent bulk advertisements and operated as part of a significant drugs operation. The agreed guideline categorisation was category 3 street dealing and a lesser role.

With leave of the single judge, he appealed on the basis that the Recorder wrongly treated two robbery convictions from 2011 as aggravating, rather than mitigating or neutral, and that the resulting sentence was manifestly excessive.

1. Appeal dismissed. The court held that the Recorder erred in treating the appellant’s robbery convictions, which were more than ten years old and unlike the present drug offences, as aggravating features.

2. Under section 65 of the Sentencing Code and the applicable sentencing guidance, the relevance of previous convictions depends particularly on their nature, their connection with the current offending, and the time elapsed. A lengthy gap without offending diminishes their aggravating effect. On the facts, the convictions should have been treated as neutral, not aggravating: the appellant had remained out of trouble for a lengthy period and the earlier robberies bore no similarity to the current offences.

3. That error did not establish that the concurrent four-year sentences were manifestly excessive. The appellant’s role in marketing Class A drugs through the line formed part of a large and sophisticated operation. Its significant scale distinguished the offending from an isolated instance of street dealing and entitled the Recorder to move from the guideline starting point towards the upper end of the range.

4. Any increase attributable to the treatment of the old convictions was likely to have been very small. Taking account of the scale of the operation and the other mitigation, the sentence was condign and not manifestly excessive.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): In R v Abdullah Mohammed, [2023] EWCA Crim 1108, the court dismissed the appeal against sentence.
• Crown Court at Reading: On 1 February 2023, the appellant was convicted after trial of two Class A drug-supply offences and sentenced to concurrent terms of four years’ imprisonment.