In court
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0264550517740999 |
| Subject Matter | In court |
In court
In court
Nigel Stone, Visiting Fellow in the School of Psychology, University of East Anglia,
reviews recent appeal judgments and other judicial developments that inform
sentencing and early release.
General sentencing issues
Firearm possession: Exceptional and tragic
Ambulance staff and police called to D.’s address found that he had shot himself in the
lower back with a 0.25 self-loading pistol, a prohibited weapon. Aged in his early 40s,
D. had been devastated by his mother’s death when he was 24 and had acquired the
gun then because he had been thinking of killing himself. He had never carried it in
public. He had recently been experiencing daily suicide ideation but he had shot himself
because he suffered from degenerative disc disorder causing constant acute pain,
despite being prescribed strong pain-killers, and hoped to ease that pain by paralysing
himself. The injury he had sustained had caused more nerve damage, exacerbating his
condition. He had two prior convictions, in 1992 for shop theft and in 2000 for an ABH
assault. He pleaded guilty to possession of a prohibited weapon and ammunition,
contrary to the Firearms Act 1968 s5 and thus subject to a minimum sentence of five
years, save in exceptional circumstances. A PSR and a psychiatric report indicated that
D. was ‘sad, vulnerable and fragile’, having experienced sexual abuse by an older
brother in childhood, bullying at school because of his homosexuality and longstanding
mental health problems in adulthood, amounting to an emotionally unstable personality
disorder. Both reports expressed concern about his ability to cope in prison.
On D.’s appeal against sentence of three years’ imprisonment the Court of
Appeal noted that although the judge had passed a sentence below the statutory
minimum he had given insufficient weight to the ‘truly remarkable and exceptional’,
‘tragic’ circumstances of the case. Though D. had been ill-advised not only to have
purchased the gun but also to have kept it for so long, he had never intended to harm
anyone else but himself. His case called for a suspended sentence and the Court
substituted a term of two years suspended for two years. As D. had already served
nearly six weeks in prison, the Court did not impose any curfew or other conditions.
R v D., [2017] 2 Cr App R(S) 1.
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
2017, Vol. 64(4) 438–451
ªThe Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0264550517740999
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