Anonymized Summary of Appellate Opinion

Factual and Procedural Background

The offender pleaded guilty to an offence of controlling or coercive behaviour in a family relationship contrary to section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015. At first instance the sentencing judge imposed a sentence of 43 weeks' imprisonment and a five-year restraining order. The Solicitor General considered the sentence unduly lenient and applied under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 for leave to refer the case to this court for review.

The offender and the victim had been married in October 2017. By early 2021 the victim wished to end the marriage. The indictment was amended on the day fixed for trial to add a count under section 76 covering a series of incidents between 22 February 2021 and 18 June 2023. The indictment particularised three specified incidents:

• 23 February 2021: the offender tied the victim to a chair with ties and other items, put a pillowcase and a duvet over her head causing breathing difficulty, made threats (including threats to smash her skull with a lamp), and ordered her not to tell anyone. The victim was extremely frightened and urinated herself.
• 7 October 2022: the offender covered the victim's nose and mouth, poured Coca Cola into her mouth causing choking, brandished a knife and made threatening remarks, and pushed a beanbag over her face.
• 17 June 2023: the offender pushed the victim against a wall during a confrontation about remaining belongings; footage from a closed-circuit camera recorded aggressive and frightening behaviour.

Procedurally, the offender was sent to the Crown Court following a magistrates' hearing in March 2024. He was initially recorded as denying controlling and coercive behaviour and was granted bail; he later breached bail and was remanded in custody. By the sentencing hearing on 28 April 2025 he had been in custody for several months. No pre-sentence report was prepared for that hearing, although a victim personal statement dated 6 October 2023 was available and a later report was prepared for the assistance of the appellate court.

Legal Issues Presented

1. Whether the custodial sentence of 43 weeks imposed by the sentencing judge was unduly lenient and therefore open to referral under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
2. How the offence should be categorised under the Sentencing Council's definitive guideline for offences contrary to section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 (in particular, whether the harm fell into category 1 (very serious) or category 2 (serious)).
3. What the appropriate guideline starting point was for the identified category and whether any initial adjustment to that starting point was justified by particular features of the case.
4. The proper extent of credit to be allowed for a very late guilty plea entered on the day fixed for trial.

Arguments of the Parties

Solicitor General's Arguments (Attorney Newcombe)

• The custodial term was unduly lenient and should be increased on review.
• The sentencing judge should have classified the harm as category 1 ("very serious alarm or distress which has a substantial adverse effect on the victim") rather than category 2.
• The sentencing judge gave excessive weight to mitigating features, including remarks about the offender having a different public and private face; reliance on such "good character" observations should be limited where there is a proven pattern of domestic behaviour.
• Material in the victim personal statement demonstrates very serious harm: diagnosis of PTSD, two years off work, daily fear, flashbacks, panic attacks, suicide attempt and significant ongoing psychological harm.

Offender's Arguments (Attorney Talbot)

• The sentencing judge adopted a careful and proper approach to sentencing.
• The sentence imposed fell within the range properly open to the sentencing judge and cannot be said to be unduly lenient.

Table of Precedents Cited

No precedents were cited in the provided opinion.

Court's Reasoning and Analysis

The appellate court's analysis proceeded in several discrete stages, adhering to the Sentencing Council guidelines and the Sentencing Code provisions identified in the opinion:

1. Duty to identify category and starting point:

   The court emphasised the statutory duty under section 59(1) and section 60(4) of the Sentencing Code to identify which guideline category most closely resembles the offender's case in order to fix the single guideline starting point. Section 60(5) allows for rare exceptions where no category fits, but otherwise the judge must choose a category and use its starting point as the only starting point for sentencing adjustments.

2. Application to the facts — category selection:

   The appellate court found that the sentencing judge had not followed that required process: the judge did not explicitly identify the category he considered to be most appropriate (the court inferred the judge may have treated the matter as category A2). The appellate court accepted the Solicitor General's submission that the facts and the victim personal statement demonstrated that the alarm and distress suffered by the victim were "very serious" and therefore that category 1A (the higher harm category) was the correct fit.

   The victim personal statement showed substantial adverse effects on the victim's mental health (diagnosed PTSD, two years off work, daily fear, flashbacks, panic attacks and other debilitating symptoms). The court considered the specific incidents of suffocation, choking, threats with a lamp and a knife, and the victim's demonstrated terror to support classification as category 1A.

3. Starting point and adjustments:

   For category 1A the guideline starting point is two years six months' custody. The court saw no basis in the circumstances for any initial downward adjustment from that starting point (other than allowance for modest mitigation of comparatively little weight). The court accepted that some mitigation existed (including past serious assault affecting the offender's mental health, good behaviour in custody and an absence of prior domestic-abuse convictions), and considered that a three-month reduction from the category 1A starting point to produce a provisional sentence of two years three months (27 months) was appropriate.

4. Credit for guilty plea:

   The court considered the timing and effect of the offender's guilty plea entered on the day fixed for trial. It observed that the very late plea achieved none of the public benefits associated with an early plea (for example, early relief to the victim of having to give live evidence). The court accepted that although there had been discussions between counsel, there had been no unequivocal indication of willingness to plead to the eventual count prior to the trial date. Applying the guideline and relevant case law principles, the court concluded that the appropriate maximum credit for the very late guilty plea was ten per cent, and no greater reduction was warranted.

5. Calculation of final sentence:

   Applying a ten per cent reduction to the provisional sentence of 27 months produced a least proper sentence of approximately 24.3 months; the court rounded slightly in the offender's favour to arrive at an overall substituted sentence of two years' imprisonment. The appellate court therefore concluded that the original sentence of 43 weeks was unduly lenient and required substitution.

Holding and Implications

Outcome: The court granted leave to refer and held that the sentence imposed below was unduly lenient. The court quashed the sentence imposed by the sentencing judge and substituted a sentence of two years' imprisonment.

Direct consequences:

• The offender's sentence was increased from 43 weeks' imprisonment to two years' imprisonment.
• The restraining order previously imposed was not in issue and remains unaffected by the decision (no change to the restraining order was required by the appellate decision).

Broader implications:

• The opinion reiterates and emphasises the procedural and statutory obligation on sentencers to identify the guideline category that most closely resembles the offender's case and to use the identified category's starting point as the single benchmark from which any adjustments are made.
• The court reminded practitioners of the proper, limited role of "good character" mitigation in domestic abuse cases where there is a proven pattern of behaviour and warned against overstating private/public persona as mitigating where the guideline and Domestic Abuse Guideline caution against such over-reliance.

The decision had the immediate effect of increasing the custodial term for the offender; the opinion does not purport to create a novel legal rule beyond clarifying and enforcing the correct application of the Sentencing Council guidelines and the Sentencing Code in this factual context.

Prepared by: Legal Analyst (anonymized)

Author of opinion: Judge Holroyde