[2025] EWCA Crim 1114

Fecha: 24-Jul-2025

Introduction

This is an appeal against a custodial sentence brought by leave of the single judge. The sentence was for a total term of 13 years 6 months' imprisonment and was imposed on 16 September 2024 at Wolverhampton Crown Court, on two counts of causing death by dangerous driving and two counts of causing serious injury by dangerous driving.

The appellant had pleaded guilty at a very late stage in the proceedings (on the day of trial) and had been accorded 10 per cent credit for his late pleas. The appellant was also made subject to a driving disqualification order against which no complaint is raised.

That bare recital is in itself sufficient to identify a tragic outcome of the driving in question. The lives of two young people have been lost. One, Liby Charris, was 16; the other, Ben Corfield, was 19. Of the two victims who were gravely injured, Ethan Kilburn was 21; the other, Ebonie Parks, was 20. Immensely moving victim personal statements of the families of all the victims and of the two victims who themselves survived were either read out in the court below or were read on the papers. This court has itself studied those statements, which detail the profound and irreversible impact of the events in question both on the victims who survived and on the families of all the victims. The loss, pain and heartbreak caused is incalculable. As the judge in the Crown Court rightly stated, no sentence that the court can impose can possibly put the clock back. Nor can any sentence be seen as an attempt to put a value on the loss of these human lives.