R v Thomas Holford

This is an application by His Majesty's Solicitor General, under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, for leave to refer a sentence to this Court, on the ground that it was unduly lenient with a view to it being increased. We give leave.

The offender, Thomas Holford, is now 25 years old. On 4 July 2025 he was sentenced to a term of life imprisonment with a minimum term of 15 years and 14 days after deduction of time spent on remand for an offence of murder. A concurrent term of 2 years' imprisonment was imposed in relation to a count which alleged assault occasioning actual bodily harm against the same victim. That assault, as we shall explain, occurred during the same time period when the offender killed his child victim.

The sentence was imposed following a trial in which the jury returned guilty verdicts to the two offences we have mentioned. Prior to trial the offender had pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of the victim. In relation to count 3 (the assault occasioning actual bodily harm) the issue that the jury had to resolve was whether the offender had caused injuries to the child's anus accidentally or by some deliberate act.

The victim was the offender's daughter, Everleigh Stroud. She was 5 weeks old in April 2021, when she sustained the injuries which killed her and the additional injuries to her anus. The offender was left in sole charge of this small baby because her mother wanted to go out. There had been no indication at any time during the child's short life that that was a decision which involved any risk of harm to the baby. The offender had on previous occasions looked after her perfectly properly. He appeared to love and care for her. The victim personal statement makes it clear, as is perhaps unsurprisingly in the circumstances, that Everleigh's mother bitterly regrets her decision to leave her child in the offender's care that night and blames herself for what happened. That is an aspect of the harm done by the offender not only to the victim but also to others. In truth, the decision to leave the child with her father, in the circumstances which prevailed in April 2021, was a perfectly normal, rational decision. It is tragic that it has caused her to feel as she does, responsible, in some way, for her daughter's death. Responsibility for that death lies squarely with the offender and with nobody else.

The two of them, father and daughter, spent the night together. During that night in circumstances about which he has never been entirely frank, the offender caused catastrophic injuries. There was a very grave injury to the child's brain which ultimately caused her death 13 months later. That interval between injury and death is a matter of significance to which we will return. The action which caused that fatal brain injury and other serious injuries to the child's skeleton was separate from the action which caused injuries to her anus and also separate to a further action whereby the offender had gripped her face below her jaw which caused bruising which was evident on post-mortem examination, on examination following the sustaining of the injuries. At this time, that is throughout the period when he was caring for the child and injuring her so grievously, the offender was intoxicated with cannabis. He was a habitual user of cannabis. He was aware that it has an effect upon his ability to control himself but used it nonetheless knowing that that night he would be the sole carer for this small baby.

That short summary of the facts will suffice to explain the tragic circumstances which brought about the end of Everleigh's life. The judge (Fordham J) was required to apply the terms of schedule 21 to the Sentencing Code in order to identify a starting point for the minimum term which he was required to impose, and then to identify the aggravating factors which were present in the case and mitigating factors also and to balance all those matters in order to determine whether and, if so, to what extent, the starting point required an increase or reduction. It is agreed before us that the judge was right to conclude that this case fell within paragraph 5 of schedule 21 and that the appropriate starting point was 15 years. It is also agreed before us that the judge identified in careful sentencing remarks all relevant aggravating and mitigating factors.

The Solicitor General contends that although that is all correct, the end result which the judge arrived at must mean that either he failed to give sufficient weight to the aggravating factors he had identified, or he gave excessive weight to the mitigating factors he identified or perhaps a mixture of both. The minimum term before the reduction for time spent on remand was 16 years, which means that the judge made an upward adjustment to the starting point which was modest, in that it was limited to 12 months only.

One particular aspect of the Solicitor General's submissions advanced before us by Ms Ledward KC, which we should deal with separately, is a criticism of the way in which the judge approached the anal injuries. These in the written Reference document are prominent in the way in which the case is advanced. It is there submitted that the infliction of injuries of this kind was "sinister" and "on the spectrum of behaviour tending towards a murder involving sexual or sadistic conduct." It is not submitted that this should have placed this case in the higher category for the purposes of selecting a starting point of 30 years but it is submitted that conduct of this kind requires a significantly greater increase in the starting point than the judge's 12 months.

In relation to the mitigating features, the Solicitor General submits that the principal mitigating factor here was the age of the offender at the time when the offences were committed. He was then 20 years old. Other mitigating factors were identified by the judge. There was psychiatric evidence in relation to the offender's mental state. The judge concluded that that did not afford any substantial mitigation. The offender has a developmental disorder which was not directly related, so far as the expert evidence is concerned, to his motivation for committing these offences. He is of good character and, as we have said, had previously cared for this child in a way which was perfectly normal. The judge identified that this was a case which fell to be dealt with as not involving an intention to kill. The judge said that he afforded only modest weight to that factor in the circumstances of this case. The judge also addressed the mitigation arising from age and good character and the neurodevelopmental disorder by observing that the offender's deliberate decision to become intoxicated with cannabis as a preparation for looking after his daughter for the night tended to negate the mitigating effect of most of that.

The facts of the case were of course set out in evidence during the trial and rehearsed by the judge in his sentencing remarks in significant detail and with significant care. That was entirely appropriate. For the purposes of this exercise, it is unnecessary to rehearse them in quite the same way. We should nonetheless add one or two observations about the facts. We have said already that the offender's decision to take cannabis in significant quantities was a deliberate one. There were some messages recovered during the investigation dating from the day on which he was due to care for this child, which indicated that he felt that he was going to find looking after her on his own stressful, and that was the context in which he was attempting to acquire more cannabis in order to deal with that stress. He managed to trick the child's grandmother into making a bank transfer to him so that he could buy that cannabis.

It is also right to record that what had happened to the child during the night was not discovered until her mother returned home at 9 o'clock the next day. She found the offender asleep and the baby in her Moses basket barely conscious. She was grey, cold to the touch, her eyes were swollen with an obvious bruise to her cheek, her breathing was laboured and noisy. Her movements were limited and not purposeful. These, as it was to prove, were all symptoms of the severe brain injury which had been inflicted. For present purposes, there is significance because they immediately signalled to the child's mother that she was in urgent need of care, that she was in distress and that she had suffered some very serious injury. None of that had disturbed the offender's sleep.

In the subsequent investigation into what had happened injuries were diagnosed. She had bleeding to her brain, both within the brain structures and throughout the outer layers of the brain. She had a hypoxic ischemic brain injury due to a lack of oxygen. This involved shearing of the structures within the brain and significant swelling. She had bleeding within her neck structures tracking down into the spinal cord. She had two posterior fractures to ribs on the left side and, highly significantly, metaphyseal corner or bucket-handle fractures to the tibias in both legs. The experts concluded that these findings meant that the baby had been gripped around the torso and shaken so violently that not only had her brain been damaged by the acceleration and deceleration of her head, but also her legs had been caused to flail with such force that those tibias were fractured. The causing of those injuries required significant or extreme shearing force.

All of that could have happened in the course of a single act of very violent shaking. The anal and facial injuries would have required additional assaults over and above that act of shaking. Afterwards and immediately afterwards the child would have been in obvious distress. It would have been apparent to anyone taking an interest in her wellbeing that she was in severe pain. She would have been crying inconsolably and then fallen quiet. She would have been unable to feed and her breathing would have been irregular, which would have been apparent to a non-medical professional.

The lacerations to the anus could have been caused by a finger. One of the experts said that if anything wider than an adult male finger had been used, then it is possible that more severe injuries would have been caused than were in fact sustained. There were three full thickness lacerations around the anus which had caused some bleeding. The judge dealt with the case on the basis that those injuries had been caused by digital penetration rather than any penetration with any other object or bodily part. The expert evidence was to the effect that the penetration need not have been deep to cause those injuries and that the level of force need not have been severe. The anal margin must have been stretched. The jury were satisfied that those injuries were not caused accidentally.

Finding her daughter in that condition of course caused her mother to panic. The emergency services were called and took her away. The police attended. The offender did not appear to be unduly concerned by what had happened. According to the police he was seen playing with his mobile phone trying to download games on it. He gave various accounts of what had happened when he had been looking after his daughter during the night. These accounts were captured on body worn video footage. He did not say that he had done anything to cause any injury or say that anything abnormal had occurred. He was not candid. He was arrested and answered most of the questions that he was asked in interview "No comment".

The child then survived for over a year. She was in a dreadful state. During the course of the year, a decision which must have been very difficult, was taken by her mother that the life support machine which was keeping her alive should be switched off but she did not die at that stage. She lived on and finally died much later, after a chest infection linked to her brain injuries, on 27 May 2022.

That period of survival, says the Solicitor General, is important in evaluating, for sentencing purposes, the harm done. In that context it is important to refer to the victim personal statement by Kelly Stroud (the child's grandmother) on behalf of the child's mother, Casey, and grandfather, Lewis. She describes the impact of what had been done to her granddaughter. How it had denied the child a life and ruined Casey's hopes and dreams for her own life with her daughter and for her daughter's future. The whole family has been affected by this grief and pain and by watching the child struggle through the 12 or 13 months during which she survived following the injuries. Casey's mother, Kelly, also records the pain of watching Casey suffering during the course of all of these events and she concludes that the whole family will be affected by grief and loss for the rest of their lives.

The reason for referring to that at this point is that it is very difficult to know what, if any, suffering Everleigh (the child) actually endured during the period when she survived during which she survived after she was injured. What, if any, level of awareness she had is simply unknown. It is right to say that during the period of survival, she herself had no quality of life whatever and that the traumatic events which occurred up to and at the time of her death caused immense harm to all of those who loved her.

The aggravating factors identified by the judge included, of course, the anal injuries and, to a much lesser extent, the facial injuries. What they meant, on any view, was that this was not a single act of violence perpetrated by somebody who may have had a sudden overwhelming loss of control as a result of being tested beyond their resilience by the behaviour of a small baby. This was a more sustained attack than that.

The other aggravating factors were these. First, Everleigh was 5 weeks old and was as vulnerable as any human person could be. Secondly, because the offender was her father and had been trusted by the rest of the family to look after her that night, there was an abuse of trust. The judge correctly observed that those first two points of aggravation are connected. It was important not to add them together. Nevertheless, with that note of caution there plainly are significant aggravating factors. The judge observed, as we have, that Everleigh had lived for 13 months after she had been injured, which was relevant to harm. Finally, the judge referred to the abuse of cannabis which was connected with the offence which was committed. There was a link between the abuse of that drug and the offender's reduced ability to exercise self-control.

To be set against those powerful aggravating factors are the six factors which the judge identified as potentially amounting to mitigation. First, he found that the offender did not intend to kill Everleigh. We have been invited to consider in this context two decisions in earlier cases where this factor fell to be weighed in similar circumstances to those of the present case. The first of these is the decision of the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) in R v Craig Smith [2018] EWCA Crim 110 . In that case the Court accepted that the lack of an intention to kill and lack of premeditation, remorse and good character were capable of being significant mitigating factors. A slightly different approach was taken by the Northern Irish court in R v Sharyar Ali [2023] NICA 20. In that case, the court observed that in a case where there had been a significant application of force to a young infant, the difference between intention to kill and intention to cause serious injury was negligible, and decided that in the circumstances of that case that it was not a significant mitigating factor.

"… but you knew the importance of supporting Everleigh’s head and none of this can reduce the seriousness of deliberately inserting your finger into Everleigh’s anus."

We have referred already to the common ground which there is before us, which shows that it is agreed that the judge was right in identifying the starting point of 15 years and in identifying and evaluating, as individual factors, the aggravating and mitigating features in the case. In our judgment, the aggravating features in this case were of very substantial weight. In all such cases and in this one as well, the vulnerability of the victim of an offence of murder, who is killed at the age of 5 weeks, is a substantial aggravating factor, which is not taken into account in the selection of the 15-year starting point in paragraph 5 of schedule 21. To that must be added, in this case, the infliction of the other injuries in addition to those which arose from the fatal assault, that is to say the injuries to the anus and, less significantly, to the face.

In evaluating the weight to be given to the anal injuries, we do not accept that the judge should have dealt with this case as one which involved some sinister sexual motivation or sadistic conduct. If the prosecution had intended to put the case on that basis, it was open to them to include a count on the indictment of assault by penetration which would be a sexual offence contrary to the Sexual Offences Act 2003 . In choosing to indict the attack on the child's anus as an assault occasioning actual bodily harm, it seems to us that the prosecution must have accepted that they were not able to prove a sexual motive. In those circumstances they cannot now invite the Court to sentence on the basis that such a motive was present. Nevertheless, the infliction of those injuries is significant. If it was not done for the purposes of sexual gratification, it must only have been done in order to inflict additional pain.

The next aggravating factor which appears to us to have very significant weight is the abuse of cannabis by the offender. He was aware that if he took substantial quantities of cannabis his ability to control himself may suffer. It is a form of intoxication. He nevertheless deliberately did that knowing that for the night to come he was to be the sole carer for his 5-week-old child. As matters turned out he was thereby taking a risk with her life which he had no right to take. That is a significant aggravating factor.

Against that it is said, rightly, that this offender was 20 years old at the time. That is a time when the brain is not yet fully developed. Young people are more likely to behave impulsively than those of more mature years and this offender was at that age when that factor is relevant when this happened. That is a material mitigating factor. The fact that he did not intend to kill his daughter when he attacked her in the brutal way that he did is, in our judgment, of relatively little weight in the overall balance of aggravating and mitigating factors. The reason for that is that inflicting force of the kind which caused the fatal injuries in this case to a 5-week-old baby involves such a high risk of causing death that the fact that there may not have been a specific intent to achieve that end is of limited significance. We agree with the Court in the decision in the case of Craig Smith (supra), that lack of an intention to kill and remorse, which are both present here, are factors that are capable of having some traction as mitigation but in the circumstances of this case that is of only limited weight.

The result of all that, in our judgment, is that the judge was clearly right to conclude that the starting point required an upwards adjustment to reflect the fact that the aggravating factors are significantly more potent than the mitigating factors. Where we respectfully part company with the judge is in the extent of the upward adjustment which he felt was adequate. We consider that an additional 12 months to a minimum term is a modest adjustment and that the circumstances of this case required an adjustment that was significantly more than modest.

We have concluded that the shortest minimum term which ought properly to be imposed in the circumstances of this case is a minimum term of 18 years, from which the time on remand is to be deducted in the way that the judge did when assessing his minimum term of 16 years, and we think that that results in a minimum term of 17 years and 14 days. We invite correction if wrong.

Epiq Europe Ltd hereby certify that the above is an accurate and complete record of the proceedings or part thereof.