EAC v The King

Factual and Procedural Background

This is an appellate judgment delivered by Judge [Last Name] arising from an appeal by the Appellant against convictions for two offences of cruelty to a person under 16, contrary to s 1(1) of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, and against the sentence imposed.

The Appellant was convicted after a jury trial in August 2024 and, on 7 October 2024, was sentenced to concurrent terms of 4 years 6 months' imprisonment for each offence. An application for leave to appeal both convictions and sentence was referred to the full court. At a hearing on 26 June 2025 the court refused leave to appeal against conviction but granted leave to appeal against sentence, quashed the sentences imposed below and substituted concurrent terms of 3 years' imprisonment. The judgment now gives the reasons for those decisions.

The victim was the Appellant's daughter, a toddler aged 2 years 9 months at the relevant time (referred to in the trial as The Child). The court ordered anonymity protections under s 45 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 for the child; hospitals were anonymised in the trial materials and are described below using neutral labels.

Relevant medical background: when The Child was 6 weeks old she suffered a brain injury which left her blind and severely disabled with cerebral palsy; she had feeding difficulties and from September 2018 was fed via a jejunal feeding tube (jejunal tube) and later had a gastric bag to receive stomach secretions. The Child also suffered dystonia (muscle spasms). In late 2019 The Child was significantly underweight and was admitted to Hospital A on 20 November 2019 and transferred to Hospital B nine days later. The Appellant spent long periods at Hospital B each day until her arrest on 12 December 2019.

Procedural history: the Appellant was not charged until November 2022. She pleaded not guilty; a trial was fixed for November 2023 but vacated because of disclosure delays. The prosecution served an expert's report on 5 October 2023 (the expert is anonymised here as Expert [Last Name]). Disclosure to the defence was provided by a hyperlinked list said to correspond to the materials relied upon by the expert. The trial before a trial judge and a jury took place in August 2024 and lasted four weeks.

Legal Issues Presented

1. Whether the Appellant's convictions were unsafe because the trial judge, in answering a question from the jury, provided information which had not been adduced at trial and which related to the reliability of the prosecution's expert evidence.
2. Whether the convictions were unsafe due to alleged judicial bias or hostility exhibited by the trial judge during the trial.
3. Whether the sentence was manifestly excessive because the trial judge erred in categorising culpability and harm under the Sentencing Council guidelines and/or failed to give adequate weight to mitigation (including delay and the Appellant's mental health/autism and family circumstances).

Arguments of the Parties

Appellant's Arguments (as advanced by Attorney [Last Name] (Defence counsel))

• Ground on conviction: It was submitted that the jury's question about the precise medical notes seen by the prosecution expert went to the heart of the defence criticism that the expert did not have the full medical history. The defence argued that the judge erred by giving the jury additional detail not given in evidence (dates and the specific material) and that this was prejudicial because it undermined the defence contention that the expert's opinion was unreliable.
• The defence contended that there was a meaningful distinction between material the expert had been sent and material the expert had actually considered, and that the judge should have confined his answer to the evidence actually given (the general statement in examination in chief and the cross-examination answer).
• Ground on bias: The Appellant alleged that the trial judge showed recurrent impatience, hostility and unsympathetic conduct to the Appellant, her witnesses and to an intermediary, giving examples (reported by the defence) such as interruptions, sharply spoken interventions, preventing the showing of parts of a video relied upon by the defence, and differential treatment of defence witnesses.
• Grounds on sentence: It was submitted that the sentence was manifestly excessive. The defence argued (i) the judge misclassified culpability (the defence suggested a lower category—either category C medium culpability or at most B2), (ii) the judge mischaracterised harm (the defence argued harm was category 2 rather than category 1), and (iii) insufficient weight was given to mitigation including long delay between arrest and charge/trial, the Appellant's mental health and autism, the effect on her relationship with her children, and other personal mitigation.

Respondent's Arguments (as advanced by Attorney [Last Name] (Prosecution counsel))

• On the jury question, the respondent relied on R v Dunster as authority for the proposition that a judge may give further information to a jury after retirement where the interests of justice require it. The respondent submitted that the jury's question suggested they might be mistaken about what material the expert had seen, and that the judge was entitled to avert confusion by giving accurate, neutral, incontrovertible information that was already identified in the expert's report and disclosed as a hyperlinked list.
• It was submitted that any additional detail given by the judge (such as date spans) was readily apparent from the disclosed materials and therefore did not prejudice the defence.
• On alleged bias, the respondent submitted that many of the judge's interventions occurred out of the jury's presence and that those made in the jury's presence were unremarkable and common in trial management. The respondent noted the judge had made adaptations to accommodate the Appellant's vulnerabilities (permission to sit with counsel, use of an intermediary and a support dog) and that there was no basis to say the judge had deliberately or even unintentionally undermined the defence.
• On sentence, the respondent submitted that because The Child was so frail, conduct that might not have harmed a robust child could cause serious harm. The respondent argued the repeated acts amounted to multiple incidents of serious cruelty or, in the alternative, a prolonged incident of serious cruelty, and that the judge was entitled to find high culpability (category B) and category 1 serious harm.

Table of Precedents Cited

Court's Reasoning and Analysis

The court divided its reasoning into two strands: the appeal against conviction and the appeal against sentence. The analysis relied heavily on the Dunster guidance about late information for a jury and on the Sentencing Council guidelines in respect of the sentencing issues.

Analysis — Appeal against Conviction

1. The court began from the principle in Dunster that a judge must consider the interests of justice when deciding whether to give further information to a jury after retirement. The court identified criteria likely to be decisive: the new material should (1) answer a jury question, (2) be neutral or incontrovertible, and (3) not disadvantage the defendant by its late admission.
2. Applying those criteria, the court found that the jury's question about what medical notes the expert had seen was a proper question the judge could answer. The judge's response recited the material identified in the expert's written report and noted what the expert had accepted in cross‑examination she had not seen (records from an earlier hospital). The court regarded that information as materially correct and incontrovertible because the expert had herself listed the materials and those materials had been disclosed (by hyperlinked list).
3. The court observed that (i) the expert had listed the materials relied upon and those materials were available on the disclosure system, (ii) it was not suggested the expert had been shown materials she did not list, and (iii) it was not suggested the expert had overlooked any listed material which could assist the Appellant. The defence had the opportunity to and did emphasise the limits of the expert's knowledge in cross‑examination and closing speech; the judge's answer reiterated those limitations rather than undermining them.
4. On the allegation of bias, the court accepted (for the purpose of analysis) that the defence could point to particular interventions and an impression of impatience in isolated passages. But the court concluded that, even cumulatively, the examples did not show that the judge's conduct rendered the trial unfair or that they could have affected the jury's verdict. There was no complaint about the content or tone of the summing up; the alleged incidents were discrete and could not be shown to have prejudiced the Appellant's right to a fair trial.
5. For those reasons the court concluded there was no arguable ground of appeal against conviction: the trial judge's response to the jury's question was permissible under Dunster and there was no evidential basis to conclude that judicial conduct rendered the convictions unsafe.

Analysis — Appeal against Sentence

1. The court recognised the sentencing task was difficult: the Appellant had committed serious offences against a highly vulnerable child, but she also had significant personal mitigation (including mental health and autism) relevant to the consequences of imprisonment.
2. The court expressed concern that the trial judge had referred to matters occurring before the indictment period began (the child's prior malnutrition), reminding that sentencing must be limited to proven offending in the charged period, although the child's frailty was a relevant factor when assessing the seriousness of the offence.
3. The appellate court agreed with the trial judge that culpability properly fell within category B of the Sentencing Council guideline. It identified two bases for that conclusion: (a) the repeated individual acts (kinking, disconnecting, altering drainage) could properly be regarded as "multiple incidents of serious cruelty," and (b) the Appellant had acted with a deliberate disregard for the child's welfare. However, the court emphasised that the high-culpability offending occurred over a comparatively short period (the charged period).
4. On harm, the court rejected the submission that harm should be in the lowest category (category 3). It accepted there was force in the argument that category 2 might have been arguable on a "high likelihood of category 1 harm" basis, but it concluded the judge was entitled to find category 1 harm (serious developmental or physical harm). The appellate court, however, considered that if category 1 was used it should be treated as towards the lower end of that category because of the comparatively short duration of the offending.
5. Applying the guideline ranges, the court concluded the sentencing judge should have made an initial downwards adjustment from the category B1 starting point. The appellate court considered that an initial adjustment to 4 years 6 months (from a 6 year starting point) was appropriate, and that after the mitigation applied by the judge (an 18-month reduction) the total effective sentence should have been 3 years rather than the 4 years 6 months actually imposed. Consequently, the court found the original total sentence manifestly excessive and substituted concurrent terms of 3 years' imprisonment.

Holding and Implications

Core holding: The court refused the Appellant leave to appeal against conviction but allowed the appeal against sentence; the sentences imposed below were quashed and replaced with concurrent terms of 3 years' imprisonment on each count.

Consequences for the parties:

• The Appellant's convictions were upheld by the court (no error found sufficient to render the verdicts unsafe).
• The Appellant's original sentence of concurrent terms of 4 years 6 months' imprisonment was quashed and substituted with concurrent terms of 3 years' imprisonment.

Broader implications: The court applied existing authority (notably R v Dunster) on the narrow circumstances in which a judge may give further information to a jury after their retirement and applied the Sentencing Council guidelines to the facts of this case. The judgment explains how the Dunster factors were applied in practice and emphasises careful application of sentencing categories where high culpability conduct occurred over a limited period. The opinion does not purport to establish a new legal principle beyond the application of those authorities to the facts before the court.