R v Stephen John Butterworth

Under the Criminal Procedure Rules r.36.15, the Court of Appeal may reopen a sentencing determination to correct a mathematical error where the error causes the appellant to receive a longer sentence than the court intended. A small numerical difference does not prevent reopening. The question is whether correction is necessary in the interests of justice. The court should then set aside the erroneous sentence and substitute the sentence produced by the correct calculation, preserving unaffected terms.

The appellant had pleaded guilty at the Crown Court at Liverpool to assault occasioning actual bodily harm and an offence under section 4 of the Public Order Act. He received suspended concurrent sentences. On 2 May 2025, the Court of Appeal allowed his sentence appeal, holding that the appropriate notional sentence for the assault was 10 months rather than 16 months. A mathematical error in applying the 25% guilty plea credit led the court to pronounce an eight-month sentence instead of the correctly calculated sentence of 30 weeks.

The Registrar referred an application under Crim PR r.36.15 to reopen the determination. The parties made no objection. The issue was whether the error justified reopening and substituting the correct sentence.

The application was determined on the papers by the same constitution of the court, in accordance with the decision in R v Cunningham; R v Di Stefano [2019] EWCA Crim 2010, (2020) 1 Cr App R 15.

1. Power and criterion. The court applied Crim PR r.36.15 to reopen its sentencing determination in order to correct the mathematical error. The relevant question was whether reopening was necessary in the interests of justice.
2. Application. The original appeal decision had identified a notional sentence of 10 months after trial and required a 25% reduction for the guilty plea. The calculation leading to an eight-month sentence was wrong. It resulted in the appellant receiving a sentence two weeks longer than the court intended. That discrepancy was sufficient to make reopening necessary in the interests of justice.
3. Order. The court reopened its determination, set aside the sentence previously pronounced and substituted a sentence of 30 weeks’ imprisonment suspended for two years. The suspension terms remained unchanged, and the sentence was concurrent with the sentence for the public order offence.

• Crown Court at Liverpool: The appellant was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years for assault occasioning actual bodily harm, with a concurrent two-month suspended sentence for an offence under section 4 of the Public Order Act.
• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division), 2 May 2025: The sentence appeal was allowed. The court reduced the appropriate notional sentence for the assault from 16 months to 10 months, but mistakenly pronounced an eight-month sentence after applying the guilty plea credit.
• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division), 4 July 2025: The determination was reopened under Crim PR r.36.15. The eight-month sentence was set aside and replaced by 30 weeks’ imprisonment suspended for two years.