GARY KEITH HENRY MORRISON v. HER MAJESTY'S ADVOCATE

The appellant is Gary Keith Henry Harrison who pled guilty at the High Court at Edinburgh to a charge of assault and robbery. He was sentenced to four years detention backdated to 3 November 1998 and against that sentence he has now appealed.

The circumstances of the offence were as follows. Up until the latter part of 1997 the appellant, who at the time was aged 17, had been living with his mother, though, as counsel explained, life with her had never been easy because of financial difficulties and because of various illnesses from which she suffered. His father had been convicted of abusing his half sister and had been imprisoned and, although he had returned to the family, he had never been a constant presence after that.

On behalf of the appellant Miss Bain stressed today, as had been stressed to the sentencing judge, that the appellant had known nothing about the knife until it was produced. He had merely expected the others to threaten the shopkeeper. Although he was shocked by this escalation of the incident, he had admittedly continued to keep a look-out. She stressed to us that his role should be seen as being rather passive, that he had not been aware of a knife and had not in particular known that it was going to be used.

When the appellant was arrested he initially denied his involvement but later gave a voluntary statement admitting his guilt and Miss Bain explained that he had at all times intended to plead guilty.

The offence in question is clearly a very serious one and would often, of necessity, attract a substantial custodial sentence. Nonetheless we have borne in mind here that the appellant has already been in custody since November 1998. The question for us in those circumstances is whether or not we can properly regard the sentence as excessive and can now substitute a non-custodial sentence, as Miss Bain urged.