R v Zohirul Haque

Expert evidence is not an essential precondition to a finding of serious psychological harm for sentencing. A judge may rely on the victim’s evidence, including a victim personal statement, and on observations made while the victim gives evidence. Sufficiency depends on the circumstances and the content of the evidence. The appellate court must respect the sentencing judge’s advantage in seeing and hearing the victim, but must correct a harm categorisation unsupported by the evidence. Fear, continuing distress, flashbacks and inability to return to work may show substantial impact without establishing serious psychological harm. Errors in categorising an offence are immaterial where the sentence imposed is the statutory minimum and no exceptional circumstances justify a lesser sentence.

The appellant was convicted at the Crown Court at Snaresbrook of robbery and possessing an imitation firearm at the time of committing an offence. He was sentenced to an extended sentence of 12 years for the robbery, comprising 10 years’ custody and an extended licence period of 2 years, together with a concurrent five-year sentence for the imitation firearm offence. A separate drug offence resulted in a fine and was not challenged.

By leave of the single judge, the appellant appealed against sentence. The central issues were whether the robbery had been wrongly categorised as causing serious psychological harm, and whether the statutory minimum sentence for the imitation firearm offence applied.

1. Disposition. The appeal was allowed in part. The extended sentence for robbery was quashed and replaced with an extended sentence of 10 years, comprising 8 years’ custody and an extended licence period of 2 years. The sentences for the other offences remained unchanged and concurrent.
2. Imitation firearm. Under section 311 of the Sentencing Act 2020, the court was required to impose a minimum sentence of five years for the offence listed in Schedule 20 unless exceptional circumstances relating to the offence or offender justified a lesser sentence. No exceptional circumstances were advanced. As the statutory minimum had been imposed, any error in categorising the offence under the guideline was immaterial. The sentence was neither manifestly excessive nor wrong in principle.
3. Psychological harm. The court applied the principle in R v Chall [2019] EWCA Crim 865, [2019] 4 WLR 102, that expert evidence is not essential. A sentencing judge may rely on the victim’s evidence, including a victim personal statement, and on observing the victim give evidence. The court recognised that the sentencing judge had an advantage because she had seen and heard the victim.
4. The transcript did not support a finding of serious psychological harm. The victim’s statement described fear, continuing distress, flashbacks and an inability to return to work, but those effects did not establish category 1 harm on the evidence available. The robbery should have been categorised as category 2A, with a starting point of five years and a range of four to eight years.
5. The seriousness of the offending and its overall impact justified placing the robbery at the top of the category 2A range. The judge was also entitled to conclude that the appellant was dangerous, and there was no realistic challenge to the extended licence period.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): On 15 October 2024, in [2024] EWCA Crim 1321, allowed the appeal in part, quashed the robbery sentence and substituted an extended sentence of 10 years.
• Crown Court at Snaresbrook: On 5 February 2024, imposed an extended sentence of 12 years for robbery, a concurrent five-year sentence for possessing an imitation firearm, and a fine for the unrelated drug offence.