[2025] EWCA Crim 1240

This meant that, in the result, the minimum term which the judge had selected before applying the plea discount was reduced from 30 year by four years and 133 days, to 25 years and 183 days. The offender had spent 501 days on remand, and accordingly the minimum term was fixed and announced by the judge in court as 24 years and 24 days.

It is unnecessary for the purposes of this judgment to set out in detail any of the relevant guidelines or any of the relevant legislation. The judge had all of that firmly in mind, and so do we.

Mr Polnay argues the Solicitor General's two grounds of criticism of that result by submitting that the aggravating factors which the judge had identified, and to which we have referred above, clearly outweighed the mitigation. Whereas the aggravating factors were powerful, the mitigation was far less weighty. Mr Polnay accepts that there was mitigation, but submits that it was of limited weight.

The aggravating factors referred to in that submission did not include the feigning by the offender of psychosis. The judge had found that that had taken place. It is clear to us that that conduct significantly complicated the investigation and prosecution of this case. It significantly prolonged the time between the murder and the trial, and it was designed to produce an unjust outcome in that the offender hoped that he might in due course be convicted only of manslaughter, rather than of the murder of which he was guilty.

Mr Polnay submits that the conduct in feigning psychosis was also relevant to the level of credit which the offender should have received. In the event, he received very substantial credit.

Mr Moses KC, who appears on behalf of the offender with Mr Malik, puts the matter slightly differently from the way in which Mr Polnay puts it. He submits that the reduction in credit was rather greater than Mr Polnay accepts.

Mr Moses further submits, both in helpful written documents and in moderate and well judged oral submissions before us this morning, that the finding of the judge about the feigning of the psychosis needs to be put into context. He referred us to other parts of the medical evidence, and he seeks to limit the duration of the pretence to a short period at the start of the investigation and prosecution of the case. He seeks to persuade us that what happened thereafter was not the fault of the offender and should not be held against him. He also observes that the judge, in the way that we have already described, regarded the aggravating factors as modest, not because they did not matter, but because he had allowed for conduct of that kind already in selecting a starting point as high as 30 years; and thus any increase should only be at the modest level which would be equivalent to the equally modest mitigation which was available. Mr Moses justifies those submissions by reference to parts of the medical and factual evidence which we have referred to already in our summary of what has taken place in this case.

Mr Moses dealt with the Defence Statement which contained the "outrageous" account of the events as being a record of what the offender was then saying. He submits that, although that account was advanced at that stage and to Dr Murphy, and although it must have been confirmed on instructions to the offender's lawyers for it to result in the Defence Statement, it was never advanced as part of any defence submissions made at any stage during the history of the proceedings.