R v James Robert Morphew

The facts of the offending

Sentence

Grounds of appeal

Discussion and conclusions

The delay between the appellant's arrest and his final trial was regrettably long and not his fault. For the first two years he was on bail under a qualifying curfew in respect of which the appropriate direction was made at sentence, reducing his time in custody by 257 days. In the 2 years following the abortive trial in 2022 the appellant was on bail with no curfew at all, the curfew having been removed. The recorder in sentencing specifically made allowance for the delay as a mitigating factor. We see no error in her approach.

Moving to disparity, we acknowledge the wide difference in 40 months passed on the co-defendants and 9 years passed on the appellant. However we do not believe that the difference is such as would cause right-thinking members of the public to think that there was something wrong with the administration of justice. Harland and Peters were both found to have held lesser roles which call for lower sentences in the Sentencing Council Guideline. Moreover, they both pleaded guilty at an early stage in proceedings entitling them to considerable discounts on those sentences. Even if, which we do not accept, the sentences passed in their cases were lenient, this court has several times pointed out that leniency to a co-defendant cannot serve to reduce an otherwise appropriate sentence passed on the defendant in question (see for instance R v Saliuka [2014] EWCA Crim 1907 ).

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