R v Hamilton Docta

On an appeal against sentence, the question is whether the sentence was manifestly excessive in the overall circumstances. The court must assess the offending, the offender’s antecedents, aggravating features and personal mitigation together. Psychiatric evidence may provide personal mitigation and must be considered carefully. Its weight may be reduced where repeated offending and custodial sentences diminish its significance, or where the offender refuses a probation assessment and the psychiatric report cannot be read alongside a pre-sentence report. Unaccounted aggravating features may counterbalance mitigation. Multiple victims and breach of a conditional discharge may justify a higher starting point or consecutive sentences.

The appellant was sentenced at Sheffield Crown Court on 29 January 2025 to a total of 34 months’ imprisonment for threatening two women with a knife, assaulting one of them, and assaulting an emergency worker. The sentencing judge considered a psychiatric report but made no apparent reduction for personal mitigation. Permission to appeal was granted on the ground that the judge may have failed to consider the mitigation adequately. The central issue before the Court of Appeal was whether the sentence was manifestly excessive in the overall circumstances, despite that failure.

Appeal dismissed.

1. The court held that the 34-month sentence was not manifestly excessive. The relevant assessment was an overall one, taking account of the prolonged offending, the threats to two different women, the assault on one victim, the assault on an emergency worker and the appellant’s extensive record of violent offending.
2. The psychiatric report provided particulars of personal mitigation which the sentencing judge should have considered more carefully. However, repeated offending and repeated custodial sentences could materially reduce the significance of such mitigation. The appellant had attended the psychiatrist’s assessment but refused to attend the probation interview. That gave the refusal the appearance of an attempt to manipulate the sentencing process and meant that the psychiatric report carried less weight because it could not be considered alongside a probation report.
3. The court identified aggravating features which the sentencing judge had not taken into account. The offences placed the appellant in breach of a conditional discharge imposed for a violent offence. That would have increased the overall sentence. The presence of two victims could have justified a maximum four-year starting point for the knife offences, rather than three and a half years, or separate consecutive starting points. The separate victim of the emergency-worker assault also supported the judge’s approach to that count.
4. Those aggravating features would have balanced the personal mitigation. Accordingly, the sentencing error did not make the sentence manifestly excessive, and the appeal was dismissed.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): Permission having been granted on renewal, the appeal against sentence was dismissed. [2025] EWCA Crim 1144.
• Crown Court at Sheffield: HHJ Reeds KC sentenced the appellant on 29 January 2025 to a total of 34 months’ imprisonment.