Unlawful Detention Does Not Automatically Mitigate an Assault as Excessive Self-Defence

1. Introduction

This judgment clarifies that an allegation of unlawful detention does not, by itself, require a sentencing court to characterise violence against police officers as excessive self-defence. Whether an offender acted defensively or offensively remains a factual question. Here, extensive video evidence supported the sentencing judge’s conclusion that the applicant’s attacks on two officers were unprovoked and wholly offensive.

The case concerned a renewed application for permission to appeal against a total custodial sentence of 42 months for three assaults at Manchester International Airport. The applicant challenged the factual basis of sentence, the categorisation of the offences, the treatment of youth and personal mitigation, and the application of totality. The Court of Appeal rejected every proposed ground as unarguable.

The court nevertheless identified an unlawful feature in the form of the sentences. Because the applicant had been under 21 when convicted, section 227 of the Sentencing Act 2020 prohibited sentences of imprisonment. The court directed that the Crown Court record be corrected to show detention in a young offender institution, without allowing an appeal or reducing the custodial terms.

The decision is principally a firm application and clarification of existing sentencing principles, rather than the creation of a new sentencing framework.

2. Factual and Procedural Background

The offending

The applicant, then aged 19, travelled with family members to Manchester International Airport to collect his mother. After she identified a passenger with whom some difficulty had apparently arisen during or after the flight, the applicant confronted that passenger in a café. He headbutted and punched him, and attempted further blows, in the presence of members of the public, including children.

Police officers subsequently located the applicant in the airport car park’s payment area. When officers attempted to move him away from a payment machine to arrest him, he resisted. He punched one officer, referred to here as the first officer, twice in the face while holding a mobile telephone. He then struck a second officer with sufficient force to knock her immediately to the floor and break her nose. He attempted another blow at the second officer before directing further punches at the first.

The second officer required manipulation of her broken nose under general anaesthetic and was left with permanent visible reminders of the injury. She also experienced substantial psychological harm. The first officer sustained facial injuries and psychological trauma which affected her work and led her to give up firearms duties.

The events were recorded extensively through CCTV, body-worn cameras and mobile telephones. Both the trial judge and the Court of Appeal viewed the relevant footage.

Convictions and acquittals

On 30 July 2025, when aged 20, the applicant was convicted of:

• Count 1: assault by beating against the passenger;
• Count 3: assault occasioning actual bodily harm against the second officer; and
• Count 4: assault on an emergency worker against the first officer.

A separate allegation concerning a third officer, Count 2, resulted in two juries being unable to agree. The prosecution then offered no evidence, and a not-guilty verdict was entered under section 17 of the Criminal Justice Act 1967. A co-accused was acquitted of the corresponding allegation in similar circumstances.

On 26 June 2026, by which time the applicant was 21, the Crown Court imposed 40 months on Count 3, 12 months concurrently on Count 4, and two months consecutively on Count 1. Following refusal of permission by Lady Justice Andrews as the single judge, the applicant renewed his application before the full court.

3. Summary of the Decision

The Court of Appeal dismissed the renewed application for permission to appeal against sentence. It agreed with the single judge that none of the seven grounds was arguable.

The only correction concerned the legal description of custody: the sentences were to be recorded as detention in a young offender institution rather than imprisonment.

4. Analysis of the Legal Reasoning

A. Unlawful detention does not determine whether violence was defensive

The applicant argued that the assaults on the officers arose during unlawful detention and should therefore have been treated, for sentencing purposes, as excessive self-defence.

The court rejected the proposed automatic connection between those propositions. The legal status of a detention does not, without more, determine the purpose or character of an offender’s violence. The sentencing court must examine what happened and decide whether the defendant was responding defensively or acting as an aggressor.

Here, the trial judge was entitled to find that neither of the two officers posed a threat to the applicant or his brother when attacked. The Court of Appeal considered the footage compelling: the applicant’s violence was offensive, unprovoked and unjustified. Consequently, the circumstances did not provide offence-specific mitigation.

The limit of this holding is important. The court did not decide that unlawful detention can never be relevant to sentence, nor did it establish that the detention in this case was unlawful. It rejected an asserted rule that unlawfulness would necessarily convert the applicant’s conduct into excessive defensive force. Equally, it did not determine the propriety of all conduct by the third officer.

B. An acquittal does not prevent compatible findings about separate offences

The applicant argued that the judge had improperly relied on the procedural history of Count 2 to support adverse sentencing findings. The Court of Appeal held that this misunderstood the sentencing remarks.

The judge had explained why the acquittal did not prevent him from determining the factual basis of the separate assaults of which the applicant had been convicted. Those findings were not inconsistent with the acquittal. Having presided over both trials, he was particularly well placed to assess the evidence.

The critical safeguards were evidential independence and consistency with the verdicts. There was ample evidence on which the judge could be satisfied to the criminal standard that the applicant acted offensively against the two officers. The alleged assault involving the third officer was distinct, and force that officer used afterwards could not retrospectively explain the applicant’s earlier violence against the others.

The decision therefore does not permit punishment for an acquitted allegation. It recognises that an acquittal on one count does not erase independently established facts relevant to other convictions.

C. Guideline categorisation and the seriousness of harm

The court upheld the placement of the actual bodily harm offence in Category 1A. The sentencing assessment properly incorporated both the physical injury and its wider consequences: surgery, permanent marks, time away from work and substantial psychological harm.

The relevant starting point was two years and six months, within a range of 18 months to four years. The judge’s assessment of 42 months for a fully mature offender was justified by aggravating features, including:

• the victim’s status as an emergency worker exercising her functions;
• the public airport setting and the presence of children; and
• the real risk of escalation and further disorder.

The court held that the judge had explained the increase sufficiently. Importantly, the judge did not separately aggravate the sentence for the officer’s sex and stature after already taking those matters into account when assessing culpability. This avoided counting the same consideration twice.

For the emergency-worker offence, the judge first assessed the underlying assault under the applicable guideline and then applied the relevant emergency-worker uplift. The Court of Appeal endorsed that structured approach.

D. Persistence is not simply a measure of elapsed time

The applicant disputed the description of his attack on the first officer as prolonged and persistent. The court emphasised that a brief attack can nevertheless be persistent.

The applicant struck that officer repeatedly, attacked the second officer, and then resumed violence against the first. That sequence supported the finding of persistence. Substantial force, directed largely at the head and face, independently supported the assessment of high culpability.

This reasoning is significant because it prevents duration from becoming an artificial proxy for seriousness. A concentrated sequence of repeated blows may demonstrate persistence even when completed quickly.

E. Youth, maturity and individual assessment

The applicant argued that the judge had asked the wrong question by considering whether he was immature beyond his chronological age. The court rejected that criticism because the judge had already recognised that, at 19 when offending, the applicant had not attained full adult maturity.

The 25% reduction reflected that ordinary age-related immaturity. Whether the applicant was additionally immature for his age was a separate, legitimate question: further developmental immaturity might have justified a greater reduction.

The judge was entitled to draw on his observations of the applicant giving evidence over two trials and on the character material. He had also expressly considered the applicant’s socio-cultural background and ethnic origins while guarding against stereotypes and unconscious bias.

The defence had invited sentencing without a pre-sentence report. That fact formed part of the court’s case-specific reasoning; the judgment does not establish that reports are generally unnecessary when assessing young adults. Nor does it create a standard 25% discount for all offenders of this age.

F. Good character, remorse and rehabilitation

The sentencing judge considered previous good character, positive references, constructive use of time in custody and the online abuse experienced by the applicant and his family. The Court of Appeal rejected the suggestion that these matters had received insufficient weight.

The judgment also preserves an important distinction: absence of remorse is not an aggravating factor, but genuine remorse can mitigate sentence. The applicant was not entitled to the benefit of remorse he had not demonstrated.

The courts additionally considered his continued attribution of responsibility to others, despite the clear footage, relevant to rehabilitation. That assessment must be understood within the express finding that absence of remorse itself did not increase the sentence. It was not a general rule penalising an offender for contesting a charge.

G. Totality and the structure of the sentence

The sentencing judge used Count 3 as the lead offence for the assaults on the officers. Starting from a mature-offender assessment of 42 months for that count alone, he added 12 months to reflect the separate attack on the first officer, producing 54 months before the reduction for youth and immaturity. The resulting lead sentence was 40 months, with 12 months concurrent on Count 4.

This distinction matters: the 54-month figure represented the combined criminality of two offences, not the judge’s assessment of Count 3 in isolation.

The two-month sentence for the passenger assault was consecutive because it involved a separate victim and was separated in time and place from the attacks on the officers. The judge then reviewed the overall result and concluded that 42 months fairly reflected the whole course of offending. The Court of Appeal endorsed both the structure and the final assessment.

5. Precedent and Statutory Framework

R v Stocker [2013] EWCA Crim 1993; [2014] 1 Cr App R 18

This is the only judicial precedent expressly cited in the supplied judgment. It governed the treatment of the defect in pronouncing the sentences as imprisonment.

The Court of Appeal relied on R v Stocker [2013] EWCA Crim 1993; [2014] 1 Cr App R 18 for the approach that a purely technical defect need not require an appeal to be allowed where correction of the court record is sufficient. Applying that approach, it directed amendment of the Crown Court record to substitute detention in a young offender institution.

The precedent’s role was therefore narrow and procedural. It did not determine the guideline categories, the assessment of self-defence, or the length of custody. The judgment provides no further account of its facts or reasoning, so a broader proposition should not be attributed to it on this material alone.

Section 227 of the Sentencing Act 2020

The decisive age for the statutory prohibition identified by the court was the applicant’s age at conviction. He was then 20. His having turned 21 before sentence did not make imprisonment the correct form of custodial disposal.

The court expressly described the original sentences as unlawful. Nevertheless, because the defect concerned their pronouncement rather than the justified duration of custody, correction did not require a reduction in term or the grant of permission to appeal.

Section 17 of the Criminal Justice Act 1967 and sentencing guidelines

Section 17 supplied the mechanism for entering the not-guilty verdict on Count 2 after the prosecution offered no evidence. Its importance was procedural; it did not establish the factual basis for sentencing the other counts.

The assault guidelines and Totality Guideline supplied the substantive sentencing framework. Their application required separate assessment of culpability, harm, aggravating features, personal mitigation and the proportionality of the overall sentence.

6. Likely Impact and Practical Significance

• Defensive mitigation requires a factual foundation. An allegation that detention was unlawful cannot replace evidence that the offender’s violence was genuinely defensive.
• Acquittals require careful, not indiscriminate, treatment. Sentencing findings must respect acquittals while remaining capable of addressing distinct, independently proved conduct.
• Short assaults may involve high culpability. Repeated or resumed violence can be persistent despite its brevity.
• Psychological consequences matter. Sentencing harm is not confined to the immediate physical injury and may include lasting occupational and emotional effects.
• Youth mitigation must be individualised. Ordinary developmental immaturity and additional immaturity for age are related but separate considerations.
• Sentence structure should remain transparent. Courts should distinguish the sentence for a lead offence from adjustments reflecting additional offences, before reviewing totality.
• Age at conviction must be checked. Turning 21 before sentence does not remove the section 227 restriction identified in this judgment.

The decision also illustrates the appellate significance of a clearly evidenced and explained sentencing exercise. The Court of Appeal reviewed each proposed ground but found no arguable basis for interfering with the judge’s factual assessments or overall sentence.

7. Complex Concepts Simplified

Excessive self-defence

A claim that violence had a defensive purpose but exceeded what was justified. Here, the court found the necessary defensive character absent.

Criminal standard

The requirement that the court be sure of an adverse factual finding. The sentencing judge had sufficient evidence to reach that standard concerning the applicant’s offensive conduct.

Category 1A

A guideline classification combining the highest relevant harm category with high culpability. Its precise operation depends on the guideline for the particular offence.

Totality

The requirement that the overall sentence fairly reflects all the offending without becoming disproportionate through accumulation.

Concurrent and consecutive sentences

Concurrent sentences run together; consecutive sentences run one after another. Here, the emergency-worker sentence ran alongside the lead sentence, while the passenger-assault sentence added two months.

Renewed permission application

A request to the full Court of Appeal to reconsider permission already refused by a single judge. This judgment dismissed that request rather than allowing a substantive sentencing appeal.

Technical sentencing defect

An error in the legal form of the sentence. Here, “imprisonment” was unlawful, but the custodial terms remained unchanged after correction to detention in a young offender institution.

8. Conclusion

The central lesson is that unlawful detention, even if established, does not automatically make an assault an instance of excessive self-defence. The offender’s actual conduct and purpose remain decisive.

The judgment also confirms the importance of compatible post-acquittal fact-finding, individualised youth mitigation, careful treatment of remorse and a proportionate overall sentence. All substantive challenges failed. The sole correction concerned the form of custody, demonstrating that an unlawful technical pronouncement can be remedied without disturbing an otherwise justified sentence.