[2025] EWCA Crim 1237

On behalf of the offender, Mr Dyble submits that the sentence was not unduly lenient. He reminds this court that the judge is a very experienced judge; indeed it is his second term as resident judge at Ipswich. He submits that the judge was intimately familiar with all the history of this case and its likely future, given the forthcoming attempted murder trial.

He submits that the judge was entitled to exercise his discretion not to impose either the minimum term for the drugs offence or to activate the suspended sentence order, given the particular circumstances which would have made it unjust to do so. Mr Dyble accepts that the offender has a very bad record and that drug addiction has blighted his life; but he submits that the overwhelming majority of the offences for which the offender fell to be sentenced were committed in March or May 2022, and thus the period of three years from the date of sentence in respect of most of the offences. He submits that it was open to the judge to find that the offender was a fundamentally changed man at the date of sentence; that there had been a remarkable cessation in his offending – there had been only one offence since that time (the breach of the Restraining Order). Moreover, the offender was engaging positively with the Probation Service, in contrast with his virtually entire previous years of offending. Mr Dyble submits that the offender's known engagement with the police de facto excludes him from further operating in drug dealing. He submits that the attack has left the offender with profound physical disabilities and neurological impairment. He was blinded in one eye and suffered a serious skull fracture causing head injury. As a consequence, he has significant issues with amnesia and cognitive functioning, as borne out by the medical reports to which we have referred. He submits that there are real issues for the offender living independently, therefore.

Further, Mr Dyble submits that the judge was entitled to have regard to the relatively low seriousness of the count of being concerned in the supply of cocaine. He had repeatedly raised at the interlocutory hearings that the count was restricted to one day, and so the Crown was confined to the way it had pleaded the charge.

Finally, Mr Dyble has submitted at the hearing before us that, as a matter of common sense, one should have regard to the fact that there will be security issues raised if the offender is to serve a sentence in prison, given that he is to be a witness at the forthcoming trial for attempted murder.

In all the circumstances, therefore, Mr Dyble submits that the sentence is not one with which this court should interfere on a reference under section 36 of the 1988 Act.