[2025] EWCA Crim 1235

When he dealt with the affray, the judge said that the applicant was holding the screwdriver in the same manner. On that occasion he was verbally aggressive and threatening and had made lunging movements towards the staff. The incident lasted for approximately ten minutes. In the course of it a female shopper had to pull her child away from the applicant. The judge said that the threats of violence with a weapon meant that this offence was within culpability B, with harm falling into the upper end of category 3. For a category B3 offence, the starting point was a high level community order with a range of up to 36 weeks' imprisonment.

Finally, in relation to having an offensive weapon in a public place, the judge said that the sentence would concurrent, having regard to the totality principle, as the possession of the screwdriver had been taken into account when arriving at the sentences for the other offences.

Turning to mitigation, the judge noted that it was submitted on behalf of the applicant that he had suffered trauma and psychological damage in connection with his life in Iraq and his subsequent experience as a migrant and asylum seeker. He had been in this country for only a matter of weeks at the time of the commission of these offences and was homeless. The judge said in terms that he was not in a position to make findings about what had led the applicant to leave Iraq and seek asylum here, but he had arrived illegally and had proceeded to commit the offences in circumstances of destitution. That amounted to little mitigation. The judge took into account the applicant's lack of any previous convictions; an injury which he had suffered while in France which continued to have a significant detrimental effect upon him; and the fact that this would be his first experience of custody, which would be particularly difficult for him as a foreign national.

Having taken those matters into account, the judge gave credit of 25 per cent for the applicant's guilty plea. He said that the appropriate sentence for the robbery would have been 16 months' imprisonment after trial, which he reduced to 12 months for the guilty plea; for the affray, after trial the sentence would have been six months' imprisonment, which he reduced to four and a half months for the guilty plea. He then made a further reduction for the principle of totality, which took the sentence down to three months, which he ordered to run consecutively to the sentence of 12 months for the robbery. The judge said that it was not appropriate for the sentence to be suspended. He noted that the applicant had already served a very considerable part of it on remand.