Daniel Hallgate [2019] EWCA Crim 1495
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**Daniel Leslie Hallgate [2019] EWCA Crim 1495** concerned an appeal against a total sentence of two years and seven months’ imprisonment imposed by the Crown Court on 11 February 2018, which the Court of Appeal (Males LJ, Jay and Edis JJ) dismissed.
Mr Hallgate had pleaded guilty to possessing an offensive weapon contrary to section 1(1) of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953, affray contrary to section 3(1) of the Public Order Act 1986, and assaulting a constable in the execution of his duty. He received six months’ imprisonment for the weapon, two years and three months for the affray, and four months consecutive for the assault. The sentencing judge had applied a 25 per cent reduction for the guilty plea to the affray, meaning the starting point was three years, the statutory maximum.
The offences arose from a domestic incident on 2 September 2018. Police had earlier attended Mr Hallgate’s address following reports of a loud dispute with his partner, Angie Hill. Around 10 am, officers were called again after members of the public witnessed the appellant, topless in the street, calling for a knife and kicking his way into his partner’s property. When police arrived in a marked car, Mr Hallgate bent down, picked up a large hunting knife, ran towards the female victim, then turned towards the police car holding the knife in a threatening manner. Officers responded by driving into him, striking his right leg and causing him to fall. He fled into a neighbouring garden, put the knife to his neck, and threatened to kill himself. He then entered a house, where he was seen attempting to cut his wrists, waving the knife around, and holding fuel and a lighter with threats to set himself alight. An armed response unit was deployed. Eventually Mr Hallgate threw the knife from a window and surrendered. He was found to be very drunk or intoxicated by other substances. While being taken to hospital for treatment of his injuries, he became aggressive, repeatedly struck himself in the face with his handcuffs, kicked out, and spat blood into the face of one of the escorting officers, who later made a victim personal statement about the alarm caused. The appellant was eventually sedated at hospital before being taken to the police station.
The sentencing judge had regard to Mr Hallgate’s extensive criminal history: sixteen convictions for forty offences between 2003 and 2018. These included multiple offences of criminal damage, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, assaulting a constable, common assault, battery, breach of an anti-social behaviour order, robbery as recently as 2013, and a very serious offence of prison riot in 2012 for which he had received six years’ imprisonment. A pre-sentence report assessed him as posing a high risk of serious harm to members of the public, his ex-partner, any future partner, and a medium risk to staff. The offences had been committed while the appellant was on licence. The judge described the affray as falling at the top of the scale, calling it serious and sickening, and remarked that the sentences were academic because of the licence, though the Court of Appeal considered that observation may not have been correct in fact and in any event the sentencing process was not academic.
The sole ground of appeal, advanced by Mr Smith on behalf of the appellant, challenged only the sentence for affray. It was submitted that the judge erred in imposing the statutory maximum starting point of three years before credit for plea, because worse cases of affray came before the courts and this was not a case meriting the maximum available sentence. Counsel contended that as a result the total sentence was too long.
The Court of Appeal rejected that submission. Edis J, giving the judgment of the court, held that this was a bad case of affray. Although after the police intervened decisively by striking the appellant with their car his threats of violence were directed at himself, before that point he had been brandishing a knife in a public street in the presence of both his victim and the police. It could not be known what would have happened had the police not been present, and even after seeing them he continued to use the knife aggressively. The possession of the knife was itself a separate criminal offence attracting a concurrent sentence and, while the guideline for that offence suggested a much lower sentence than three years, the statutory maximum for possessing a bladed article was four years, which the court considered of some relevance. The court emphasised that any offence of affray involving a knife in public was a very serious affray, not all affrays involving lethal weapons. The imposition of a maximum penalty where Parliament had set it at a relatively low level did not require the case to be the worst imaginable. The court cited R v Bright [2008] EWCA Crim 462 for that proposition. The court found that Mr Hallgate posed a serious risk of harm, derived both from the circumstances of the offending and his past conduct. Although the dangerous offender regime was not engaged because of the nature of these offences, risk and the protection of the public remained relevant sentencing purposes. His previous convictions were serious aggravating features in a case that was already serious. The judge was entitled to take a sentence of three years before discount for the first and second offences together. There was no challenge to the consecutive term for the assault on the officer, which the court described as unpleasant.
In short, the court held that the sentence of two years and seven months was neither manifestly excessive nor wrong in principle, and dismissed the appeal.