R v Terri Marie Wood & Anor

On a reference alleging undue leniency, the question is whether the sentence falls outside the range which a judge could reasonably impose. Particular deference is due to the sentencing judge’s evaluative assessment after hearing the trial evidence. Under the sentencing guideline for causing or allowing a child to suffer serious physical harm, serious cruelty means cruelty which is exceptionally serious compared with other cases of that offence. Two separate incidents suffice to constitute multiple incidents. Failures to protect an infant and seek help despite obvious suffering may indicate deliberate disregard for the victim’s welfare. Treating those failures instead as aggravating factors does not necessarily involve an error of principle. A potentially higher appropriate starting point does not itself establish undue leniency.

Terri Marie Wood and Jack William Davies were the parents of an infant who died from an unascertained cause. Medical investigations revealed 14 rib fractures and a skull fracture sustained before her death. Those injuries did not cause her death. The prosecution alleged that one parent inflicted the injuries while the other failed to take reasonable steps to protect her. It was unnecessary to establish which parent performed each role.

A jury convicted both parents of causing or allowing a child to suffer serious physical harm. Choudhury J sentenced Wood to 20 months’ imprisonment and Davies to two years’ imprisonment in the Crown Court at Birmingham. He assessed culpability as medium and harm at the upper end of category 3 under the sentencing guideline.

The Attorney General sought leave to refer both sentences under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. The central issues were whether the judge should have assessed culpability as high because of multiple incidents of serious cruelty or deliberate disregard for the infant’s welfare, and whether the sentences were unduly lenient.

Leave to refer both sentences was granted, but the court declined to alter them. The sentences were perhaps lenient, but they fell within the range which a judge could reasonably impose (paras [52]–[54]).

1. The judge could properly conclude that he could not be sure that the force used was very significant. The Attorney General effectively conceded that assessment. Significant force was a medium-culpability factor under the guideline (paras [45]; [50]).

2. Two separate incidents were sufficient to constitute multiple incidents under the guideline. Since every instance of the offence involved serious injury to a child, serious cruelty required something exceptionally serious compared with other cases of that offence. The incidents fell to be assessed as cruelty rather than serious cruelty in that comparative sense (paras [46]–[47]; [50]).

3. The offenders had to be sentenced on the basis that the identity of the person who inflicted the injuries remained unproved. Each had failed to prevent the incidents or seek help afterwards, despite the infant’s agonising pain. Those failures could have been treated as deliberate disregard for the victim’s welfare, a high-culpability factor. However, the judge made no established error of principle by treating them instead as aggravating factors later in the sentencing exercise (paras [48]–[49]).

4. Even assuming that deliberate disregard should have been established, it had to be weighed against the medium-culpability factors of significant force and multiple incidents of cruelty. On that assumption, the case lay on the borderline between categories 3B and 3C. A two-year starting point, instead of 18 months, might have been appropriate and would have produced slightly higher sentences after the other adjustments, which were unchallenged (para [50]).

5. Particular deference was due to the evaluative assessment of a judge who had seen and heard the trial evidence. A reference under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 did not turn on whether the appellate court would have imposed the same sentences. The governing question was whether they were outside the range reasonably available to the judge. That threshold was not met, and both sentences remained unchanged (paras [51]–[54]).

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): In [2026] EWCA Crim 1266 , granted leave to refer both sentences under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, but declined to alter them.
• Crown Court: Following unanimous guilty verdicts on 31 October 2025, Choudhury J imposed immediate custodial sentences on 24 February 2026. Wood received 20 months’ imprisonment and Davies received two years’ imprisonment.