R v Skinner
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 18 March 1993 |
| Date | 18 March 1993 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
Court of Appeal
Before Lord Taylor of Gosforth, Lord Chief Justice, Mr Justice Pill and Mr Justice Sedley
Criminal sentencing - reasons for sentence
If those who had to pass sentence specified reasons or explained the process by which they arrived at that sentence, then that would bring them to consider the likely effect and public reception of that sentence.
The Court of Appeal so observed on Attorney General's Reference (No 23 of 1992) under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, when declining for medical reasons to increase a three-month prison sentence, described as derisory, passed on an offender who pleaded guilty to wounding with intent, contrary to section 18 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861, by stabbing the victim twice.
The sentence had been passed on Martin Skinner, aged 29, by Miss Recorder Cooper, QC, at Lewes Crown Court last June. In addition to the three months for the wounding, a total of nine months imprisonment, suspended for one year at Lewes Crown Court in October 1991, was brought into operation consecutively.
Mr Orlando Pownall for the Attorney General; Mr Alan P Kent, assigned by the Registrar of Criminal Appeals, for the offender.
The LORD CHIEF JUSTICE, giving the judgment of the court, said that the victim was reversing his vehicle towards a weighbridge in the scrap yard and was accused by the offender and his girlfriend of nearly running them over. They reacted aggressively, repeatedly kicking the vehicle and the victim remonstrated, pushing the offender away. The offender started to defend himself and then stabbed the victim once in the chest and once in the abdomen with the penknife. Happily the victim was a large man and the 21/2in blade did not penetrate far enough to damage any significant internal organs.
The Attorney General submitted that the sentence was clearly unduly lenient and where such an offence was committed with a knife in a public place the sentence should reflect the need for deterrence and also the public concern at the gravity of such offences, which were all too prevalent.
In their Lordships' judgment, the sentence passed by the recorder was not only lenient, it was not merely unduly lenient, it was derisory. Three months imprisonment for such an offence ought simply not to have been imposed.
The recorder did...
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