R v Mills
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 30 November 2004 |
| Date | 30 November 2004 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
COURT OF APPEAL Criminal Division
Before Lord Justice Pill, Mr Justice Gray and Sir Ian Kennedy
Criminal sentencing - practice on specified minimum service to be served not retrospective
Where the court imposed a life sentence it was now the usual practice to set the specified minimum period to be served at half rather than two-thirds of the notional determinate period considered appropriate, but that practice had evolved over the years and on an appeal against such a sentence which had been imposed some years ago the changes in tariff and practice did not apply retrospectively.
The Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, so held in allowing an appeal by Brett Mark Mills against a sentence of life imprisonment imposed on September 11, 1995, by Judge Lowry, QC, at the Central Criminal Court on his conviction of abducting a child, wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm, false imprisonment, rape and buggery. The judge set the notional determinate period at 30 years and the specified minimum period at 18 years.
Mr Mark McKone, assigned by the Registrar of Criminal Appeals, for the defendant; Miss Sallie Bennett Jenkins for the Crown.
SIR IAN KENNEDY, giving the judgment of the court, said that the grounds of appeal against sentence asserted that the notional determinate sentence was manifestly excessive, that the specified period should have been set at one half rather than two thirds of the notional determinate sentence and that no account was taken of the period of 18 months spent by the defendant in custody on remand.
These were very grave offences, which had all been committed against a girl then aged 12, but their Lordships had to consider whether 30 years was a commensurate period nonetheless.
In their judgment, it was manifestly excessive both today and, more relevantly, at the time of conviction in 1995.
Their Lordships thought the judge fell into error in seeking, by means of a sentence of such duration, to protect the public from the defendant for the future whereas that would be achieved by the indeterminate sentence itself. The notional determinate period should have been set at 22 years.
In setting the specified minimum period...
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