Qasem, R. v

Factual and Procedural Background

The Applicant, aged 17 at the time of the proceedings, was tried in the Crown Court at The City before Judge Ellenbogen and a jury and, on 6 November 2024, was convicted of murder. On 19 December 2024 the Applicant was sentenced to detention during His Majesty's Pleasure with a minimum term of 14 years and 113 days. The Applicant renewed an application for permission to appeal against sentence after refusal by a single judge; the renewed application was heard by the Court of Appeal (Judge Coulson, Judge Jay and Judge Leonard) sitting as a panel.

The offending arose on the afternoon of 4 April 2024 when the Applicant and a Co-accused went to The Street to visit a friend. They encountered a Victim and an Associate. The Victim struck the Applicant two or three times. The Applicant and the Co-accused chased the Victim and the Associate; later the Applicant stabbed the Victim three times at a different location. Two wounds were fatal. A passerby (Witness) gave evidence that he saw the Applicant take from his waistband a silver object about four inches in length. Some events were captured on CCTV, though the fatal injuries occurred out of view of the cameras. The Applicant's trial defence was that the knife used belonged to the Victim, that the Applicant picked it up after the Victim dropped it, and that the Applicant acted in self-defence; the jury rejected that defence.

Legal Issues Presented

1. Whether the trial judge erred in sentencing by finding as a fact, to the criminal standard, that the Applicant had taken a knife to the scene (thus justifying an uplift to the sentencing starting point).
2. Whether the CCTV evidence and other material made the judge's factual finding that the Applicant had a knife unreasonable.

Arguments of the Parties

Applicant's Arguments

• The Applicant accepted the judge's legal approach to making factual findings for sentence but argued that, on the material (notably CCTV), the judge's finding that the Applicant had taken a knife to the scene was unreasonable.
• In renewed oral submissions, counsel for the Applicant additionally suggested (as a new contention) that if a knife was present at the initial confrontation it might have been in the Co-accused's hand rather than the Applicant's.

Prosecution's Case (as recorded)

• The Crown relied on the Witness who said he saw the Applicant produce a silver object of about four inches from his waistband; the Crown's case was that that object was the knife used to kill the Victim.
• The jury rejected the Applicant's claim of self-defence and found the Applicant guilty of murder.

Table of Precedents Cited

No precedents were cited in the provided opinion.

Court's Reasoning and Analysis

The Court of Appeal considered the CCTV footage and all other evidence and concluded the judge's factual finding that the Applicant brought a knife to the scene was not unreasonable. The court's analysis can be summarised in the following steps:

• The trial judge was best placed to assess factual matters, having presided at the trial.
• The Witness's evidence was consistent and compelling: he identified the Applicant by the Applicant's distinctive light-coloured tracksuit and stated that the Applicant produced a silver object about four inches long from his waistband during the initial confrontation.
• The CCTV footage was an incomplete record. The footage showed only part of the initial confrontation from a different angle and began when the Applicant was already the aggressor; it therefore did not replicate the Witness's sightline and could not be taken to displace the Witness's account.
• The object described by the Witness could have been hidden in the Applicant's waistband until produced, explaining its absence on the limited CCTV images; at a critical frame the Applicant was largely obscured by the Co-accused.
• The Victim's abrupt change in behaviour (from attacking to fleeing) was best explained by the production of a weapon by the Applicant; no credible alternative explanation was advanced that matched the observed conduct.
• The jury rejected the Applicant's self-defence account at trial. The court found the scenario necessary to support the Applicant's contention (that the Applicant had picked up the Victim's dropped knife and then been threatened by a second knife) to be implausible; in the court's view the only realistic explanation was that the Applicant used his own knife.
• The late proposal that the Co-accused had the knife was treated as a new, unsupported submission inconsistent with the evidence (no CCTV shows a knife in the Co-accused's hand; it was not the Witness's evidence; the Applicant had not previously advanced that account), and would, if true, require accepting the Applicant was untruthful about the knife's provenance.
• On this basis the appellate court agreed with the single judge that the trial judge's factual findings for sentence were open on the evidence and were not unreasonable.

Holding and Implications

RENEWED APPLICATION REFUSED

Holding: The Court of Appeal refused the renewed application for permission to appeal against sentence, concluding the trial judge was entitled to find, to the criminal standard, that the Applicant had brought a knife to the scene and had used it to kill the Victim.

Implications: The direct effect is that the Applicant's original sentence (detention during His Majesty's Pleasure with a minimum term of 14 years and 113 days) remains in place. The opinion records that no new legal principle or wider precedent was established beyond the court's application of established principles governing factual findings for sentence where those findings are not inherent in a jury's verdict.