R v Aroyewumi
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 20 June 1994 |
| Date | 20 June 1994 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
Court of Appeal
Before Lord Taylor of Gosforth, Lord Chief Justice, Mr Justice Waterhouse and Mr Justice Bell
Criminal sentencing - guidelines - drug offences
Revised sentencing yardsticks for offences involving Class A drugs were laid down by the Court of Appeal in a reserved judgment dismissing five sentence appeals.
Instead of using the factor of monetary value of such hard drugs, the new yardstick for measuring the relative significance of any seizure of Class A drugs was by weight rather than street value.
By application of the new yardsticks the court dismissed the appeals of Jose de Jesus Aranguren of eight years in prison, Bisi Aroyewumi and Nimota Bioshogun of 10 years each; John Littlefield of 15 years and Robert Sidney Gould of seven years. Aranguren had been deported in accordance with a recommendation.
Mr Peter Thornton, QC and Mr John O'Higgins for the first four appellants, Mr Ben Emmerson for Gould, all assigned by the Registrar of Criminal Appeals; Mr Alan Suckling, QC and Mr Ian Foinette for the Customs and Excise in the first four appeals; Mr Alan Suckling, QC and Mr Andrew R Mitchell for the Crown in Gould's appeal.
The LORD CHIEF JUSTICE, giving the judgment of the court, said that in each case the basis on which the quantity of drugs seized was assessed at the trial had been challenged.
Money values, the street value, was put upon each seizure by the Customs and Excise, purporting to be the amount releasable from the ultimate consumers. Although that approach of assessing the street value had been adopted for some years, it was argued that figures used in the five cases under appeal were unrepresentative and unfair. More fundamentally, it was submitted that a more satisfactory basis for assessing the importance of a consignment of cocaine was by weight rather than by street value.
Sentencing guidelines had been laid down in R v AramahUNK ((1982) 76 Cr App R 190); R v Martinez ((1984) Cr App R (S) 364) and R v Bilinski ((1987) 9 Cr App R (S) 360).
At the heart of the appeals was the method which had been used to assess street value and its application in the cases. Their Lordships had admitted expert evidence on that topic on behalf both of the appellants and of the Customs and Excise authorities.
Notwithstanding problems, their Lordships believed that the provision to the courts of...
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