[2025] EWCA Crim 1461

The judge imposed three concurrent sentences of life imprisonment in respect of those three counts. That required him to fix a minimum term which must elapse before the Parole Board can consider whether it is safe for the applicant to be released. The minimum term at which the judge arrived was a period of 16 years. That was reduced to take account of time spent on remand awaiting trial and sentence, with the result that the specified minimum term under section 232 of the Sentencing Act 2020 was 15 years and 85 days. A number of other orders and consequences of those convictions and sentences ensued. Nothing now turns on any of those.

The judge calculated that minimum term by assessing the appropriate determinate sentence (had such a sentence been passed) at 24 years' imprisonment. He was required to reduce that by one third to take account of the early release provisions, which do not apply to minimum terms but which do apply to determinate sentences. The reason why the judge imposed life sentences with those minimum terms was that he had found that for the purposes of the Sentencing Code, the applicant was a dangerous offender. The judge determined that the offences taken together, and aggravated by highly relevant previous convictions, were so serious that life sentences were justified. He was, therefore, in those circumstances required to impose such a sentence by section 274(1) and (3) of the Sentencing Code. Those sentences were ordered to run concurrently with each other. They were all the same. It might be that each individual count on its own might have warranted a different sentence, but in these circumstances it was not an error to impose the same sentence concurrently in respect of all three counts.

When considering the sufficiency or otherwise of those minimum terms, it is important to remember that each of them is designed to reflect the totality of the criminality – that is to say, a long period of time during which a significant number of people were prevailed upon in the hope that they would respectively, along with the applicant, kidnap, rape and murder Holly Willoughby.