Ismaila Kamarra-Jarra v Rex

When sentencing a young adult for murder, the statutory starting point is a guide rather than a mechanical result. Although chronological age selects the normal starting point, the sentencer must assess the offender’s actual maturity and the extent to which youth, trauma, abuse, neglect, mental health or external influences reduced culpability.

The sliding scale in paragraph 5A of Schedule 21 to the Sentencing Act 2020 does not create a sentencing cliff edge at 18. Where joint offenders are close in age, differing starting points must not produce disparity exceeding a fair reflection of their true age and maturity. The final minimum term must remain fact-specific and proportionate.

Following a jury trial at Winchester Crown Court, the appellant and two co-defendants were convicted of the jointly committed murder of a drug supplier during a planned robbery. The appellant was 18 years and four months old at the time of the murder; his co-defendants were 17.

The sentencing judge treated the murder as one for gain and imposed a mandatory life sentence on the appellant with a 32-year minimum term. Each younger co-defendant received detention during His Majesty’s pleasure with a 29-year minimum term. The appellant appealed on the grounds that the judge gave insufficient weight to his youth, immaturity and severely adverse childhood experiences, and that the disparity was excessive.

The central issue was how paragraph 5A of Schedule 21 to the Sentencing Act 2020 affects sentencing where jointly culpable offenders fall immediately on opposite sides of their eighteenth birthdays.

1. Appeal allowed. The 32-year minimum term was manifestly excessive. The Court quashed it and substituted a minimum term of 28 years, less time on remand, producing a final minimum term of 27 years and 91 days.
2. The starting points in Schedule 21 to the Sentencing Act 2020 begin, but do not determine, the sentencing exercise. The court must apply them flexibly and then set an individual, fact-specific minimum term after considering all relevant aggravating and mitigating factors. Paragraph 8 permits a term of any length despite the starting point.
3. Paragraph 5A supplies the normal starting point for a child convicted of murder. It does not alter the established approach to a young adult who has just turned 18. Chronological age determines the usual starting point, but maturity determines the extent to which youth reduces culpability. The sentencing guidance for children and young people therefore remained relevant to assessing this appellant’s culpability.
4. The judge was entitled to select the 30-year starting point and identify aggravating features. However, he did not adequately address the appellant’s low maturity or the effect of his severe childhood abuse, instability, trauma and vulnerability on culpability. Those matters should have outweighed the aggravation.
5. The three-year difference between the appellant’s and the co-defendants’ terms also lacked a rational justification on the facts. They were in the same academic year and the judge had not distinguished their roles in the murder. The statutory age differential could not be preserved arithmetically without regard to individual maturity and culpability.
6. Postscript. The precise minimum term, including the deduction for remand time required by section 322, is a judicial determination. An arithmetic error may be corrected only under the slip rule in section 385 of the Sentencing Act 2020 or by the Court of Appeal; an administrative adjustment is impermissible.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): Allowed the appeal in [2024] EWCA Crim 198. It quashed the 32-year minimum term and substituted a 28-year term, less remand time.
• Winchester Crown Court: On 26 January 2023, following a jury trial before Spencer J, convicted the appellant of murder. On 24 February 2023, imposed a mandatory life sentence with a 32-year minimum term.