R v Paula Marie Usherwood & Ors

A murder committed to secure commercial advantage or protection for a drug-supply enterprise may properly be treated as murder for gain, attracting the 30-year starting point under Schedule 21 to the Sentencing Act 2020. Significant planning may remain a distinct aggravating feature and is not necessarily double counted by that classification.

The minimum term must reflect each offender’s proved role, knowledge, motivation and relevant antecedents. A sentencing judge who presided over a lengthy trial is well placed to make those assessments. Leave to appeal will be refused where the judge applied the correct statutory starting point, fairly accounted for mitigation, and imposed a term within the appropriate range.

The three applicants were convicted of murder after a lengthy trial before Turner J at Nottingham Crown Court. The killing arose from a planned ambush in a violent dispute between rival drug-dealing syndicates. The intended victim did not attend, and Michael Anton O’Connor was stabbed to death instead.

Each applicant received life imprisonment. The judge set minimum terms of 32 years for Ward, 30 years for Usherwood, and 20 years for McGuire, in each case less time spent on remand. A single judge refused leave to appeal against sentence. The renewed applications challenged the statutory starting points, the assessment of mitigation, alleged double counting of planning, and the proportionality of the terms.

1. All three renewed applications for leave to appeal against sentence were refused. The court held that the sentencing judge, having presided over the lengthy trial, was entitled to assess the applicants’ respective roles and culpability from the evidence.

2. Ward was a leading figure in the drug-dealing syndicate and had instigated the plan to inflict serious violence. The judge was entitled to classify the murder as one for gain and to use the 30-year starting point under Schedule 21 to the Sentencing Act 2020. Significant planning was not double counted as an aggravating feature. His leadership, planning, knowledge that the attackers would be armed, and relevant previous offending justified an increase to 32 years. The absence of an intention to kill carried little weight because the risk of death was obviously very high.

3. McGuire had a lesser role and a different motivation. The judge did not treat the murder as one for her gain. He nevertheless found that she knowingly provided substantial assistance to the planned attack, including by controlling the CCTV, and knew weapons would be used. The 25-year starting point was open to him, and the reduction to 20 years properly reflected her lesser involvement, lack of relevant convictions and absence of an intention to kill.

4. Usherwood was deeply involved in both the planning and execution of the ambush and in the drug enterprise which the killing was intended to protect. The judge was entitled to find that her case was murder for gain and to apply the 30-year starting point. Her personal mitigation did not require a reduction below that point, since the aggravating and mitigating features were properly treated as cancelling each other out.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): renewed applications for leave to appeal against sentence refused: [2025] EWCA Crim 920.
• Single judge of the Court of Appeal: refused leave to appeal against sentence on the papers.
• Crown Court at Nottingham (Turner J): convicted the applicants of murder on 12 June 2023 and, under section 322 of the Sentencing Act 2020, imposed life sentences with the minimum terms challenged on appeal.