R v Hugo Okecha Nwankwo

For a life sentence, the court must itself fix a minimum term that gives effect to credit for remand custody. That exercise cannot be left to prison administration. The court may also give credit for a restrictive but non-qualifying bail curfew. The credit must reflect the conditions and the interests of justice, rather than a fixed arithmetical formula.

Fresh psychiatric evidence will not reduce culpability where its account of the offender’s reaction is inconsistent with the facts established by the jury’s verdict. In sentencing a child for murder, the court must assess maturity individually. The statutory starting point is not a substitute for that assessment, and a substantial uplift may reflect the child’s own culpability for grave aggravating features.

In 2012, the appellant, who was aged 16 years and 9 months at the date of the offence, was convicted at the Central Criminal Court of murder and violent disorder arising from a group knife attack. He was detained during His Majesty’s pleasure with a minimum term of 16 years. A previous sentence appeal in 2014 was dismissed.

Following a reference by the Criminal Cases Review Commission under section 9 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, he challenged the minimum term. He contended that it failed to credit remand custody and a police-bail curfew, that fresh psychiatric evidence should reduce culpability, and that the uplift from the youth starting point was excessive. His minimum term had meanwhile been reduced to 15 years and 4 months in 2023 following a review under R (Smith) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] 1 AC 159.

1. Appeal allowed in part. The court quashed the existing minimum term of 15 years and 4 months and substituted 14 years and 4 months. It otherwise left the 2012 sentence undisturbed.

2. Under section 269(3)(b) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, a life-sentence minimum term is part of the court’s sentence. The court, not prison administration, must calculate and give effect to credit for remand custody. The sentencing judge had made no such allowance. The appellant was therefore entitled to credit for 293 days on remand: see Sesay and others [2014] EWCA Crim 483.

3. The appellant had no statutory entitlement to credit for his non-qualifying police-bail curfew. However, the sentencing court had a discretion to allow appropriate credit. R v Whitehouse [2019] EWCA Crim 970 showed that no precise formula applied, although it was a helpful comparator. As this curfew was materially less onerous than that in Whitehouse, 72 days was the just allowance. Together, the remand and curfew allowances reduced the term by one year.

4. The psychiatric evidence was capable of belief and would have been admissible, but it afforded no ground for reducing the sentence. The court accepted that the appellant had a mental disorder. Its suggested effect on culpability, however, depended on an unexpected confrontation with violence and was detached from the planned, knife-involved joint enterprise found by the jury. Nor would the report have added substantially to the material already available on his maturity.

5. A child’s maturity remains relevant when setting a murder minimum term, even where the sentence is fixed by law. The 12-year youth starting point in Schedule 21 was necessarily broad. A significant uplift could properly reflect this appellant’s own culpability, including his participation in a knife attack. General deterrence was not a sentencing purpose for a child, but the public-policy condemnation of carrying knives applied to offenders under 18 as well as adults. No clear sentencing error was shown.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — on a reference by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, allowed the appeal only to credit remand custody and the non-qualifying curfew, substituting a minimum term of 14 years and 4 months: [2024] EWCA Crim 1375.
• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — dismissed the appellant’s earlier appeal against sentence in 2014. The citation is not stated in the judgment.
• Central Criminal Court — in 2012, convicted the appellant of murder and violent disorder and imposed detention during His Majesty’s pleasure with a 16-year minimum term.

In 2023, Johnson J reduced the minimum term to 15 years and 4 months after a review under R (Smith) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2006] 1 AC 159.