Edmunds [2019] EWCA Crim 47
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R v Edmunds [2019] EWCA Crim 47 concerns a renewed application for leave to appeal against sentence on the ground of disparity with a co-accused, which the Court of Appeal (Lord Justice Davis, Mr Justice Sweeney and Sir Wyn Williams) refused.
Paul Roger Edmunds, aged 67 with no relevant previous convictions, had pleaded guilty to possessing prohibited weapons, namely stun guns. Following two trials, he was convicted of conspiracy to transfer prohibited weapons and ammunition; transferring prohibited weapons, namely three Thompson Contenders; possessing a prohibited firearm, namely a Brocock revolver; two counts of doing acts tending and intended to pervert the course of justice, namely falsifying firearms registers and tampering with primer tools; and two counts of fraudulent evasion of prohibitions in relation to exporting guns to France and importing Colt handguns. On 21 December 2017 His Honour Judge Richard Bond imposed a total sentence of 30 years’ imprisonment, designating the conspiracy as the principal offence and imposing concurrent terms ranging from two to 15 years on the remaining counts.
Mr Edmunds was a registered firearms dealer based at his home in Gloucester, authorised to deal in both section 1 and section 5 weapons. The judge found that over nearly seven years, from early 2009 until late 2015, Mr Edmunds had been the linchpin of the conspiracy to transfer prohibited weapons and ammunition, concluding that without him the conspiracy would not have worked and that his culpability was the highest of all involved. Mr Edmunds had been at the top of a chain of supply of hundreds of handguns and thousands of rounds of ammunition to criminal gangs in the United Kingdom. He had illegally imported hundreds of weapons, acquired factory‑made ammunition both current and antique, manufactured ammunition for obsolete calibre weapons himself, and sold hundreds of weapons and thousands of rounds, both factory‑made and home‑made, to Mohinder Surdhar (a section 1 firearm licence holder whom the judge regarded as the fulcrum of the conspiracy with culpability not much less than that of Mr Edmunds) in the knowledge they would be transferred unlawfully to criminal gangs. The principal purchaser from Mr Surdhar was Stephenson, a leading member of the Burger Bar organised crime group in Birmingham, via his armourer, Nazran. That group sold the guns and ammunition on to the wider criminal fraternity. Following guilty pleas and a subsequent Attorney General’s reference, Stephenson was sentenced to 22 years’ imprisonment and Nazran to 17 years and three months. By way of example of the consequences of the conspiracy, between August 2011 and August 2017 a police operation investigated some 107 firearms events, during which three people were murdered, 11 others shot, and shots discharged on 28 other occasions. The three murder victims were all shot with ammunition Mr Edmunds had made, and 31 events involved ammunition he had undoubtedly made. In many other events ammunition was recovered consistent with having been made by him. Over the years police recovered 19 weapons he had imported and sold on. When arrested in 2015, a search of his home revealed 161 firearms or component parts, but records with anomalies for only 21 of them, as well as thousands of rounds of ammunition, many made by him. Mr Surdhar obtained weapons and ammunition from various sources including Mr Edmunds; a complete armoury was found at his address when arrested in 2015, by which time he had disposed of anything incriminating. The offences in counts 2 to 8, for which only Mr Edmunds fell to be sentenced, were each serious or very serious offences of their type.
Mr Surdhar pleaded guilty on 9 March 2016 in circumstances attracting full credit and was sentenced on 31 January 2018 to 14 years’ imprisonment. The sole ground of appeal advanced by Mr David Nathan QC was that there was an unfair disparity with Mr Surdhar’s sentence, which was ultimately less than half that imposed upon Mr Edmunds. Mr Nathan accepted that the appropriate comparison was between 30 years in Mr Edmunds’ case and a notional sentence after trial of 21 years in Mr Surdhar’s case, and recognised that in the particular circumstances a reduction below 25 years would be inappropriate, but submitted there should be some reduction to properly reflect the different sentence imposed on Mr Surdhar. No complaint was or could be made as to the overall length of the sentence in itself.
The single judge had refused permission, observing that the circumstances of the two offenders were very different. The sentence of 30 years on Mr Edmunds was intended to reflect the entirety of his offending, not simply the conspiracy offence, with the other offences made concurrent rather than consecutive. Mr Surdhar had pleaded guilty and his sentence was reduced by one‑third, whereas Mr Edmunds had not pleaded guilty and was not entitled to a reduction. Their personal mitigation was different. Even in relation to the single conspiracy offence, Mr Edmunds’ culpability was higher. Taking all those factors into account, there was no unjustified or unexplained disparity.
The court emphasised that disparity is a difficult ground upon which to succeed, particularly when the sentence imposed is accepted to be unappealable in itself. The court referred to R v Martin & Ors [2012] EWCA Crim 1908, in which it was made clear that apparent leniency to one offender is no ground for reducing a proper sentence on another, and to R v Saliuka [2014] EWCA Crim 1907, which made clear that one sentencing error is not cured by making another. Mr Nathan submitted that right‑thinking members of the public would consider something had gone wrong with the administration of justice such that Mr Edmunds’ sentence should be reduced. He argued that if the two men had been sentenced at the same time, standing side by side, it would have been wrong not to make some adjustment to produce appropriate proportionality, and that there must be a limit to how significantly less a sentence can be imposed on one co‑accused without at least some reduction in the otherwise appropriate sentence on another. He submitted that whilst only Mr Edmunds fell to be sentenced on counts 2 to 8, there were some parallels in that Mr Surdhar had also perverted the course of justice by seeking to cover his tracks before his arrest.
The court rejected the renewed application. Taking all the various matters into consideration, applying in particular the authorities to which reference had been made, and notwithstanding the attractive way in which the renewed application had been advanced, the court held it was not arguable that Mr Edmunds’ sentence should be reduced. In short, the renewed application for leave to appeal on the ground of disparity was refused, the court finding no unjustified or unexplained disparity between the proper sentence imposed on Mr Edmunds and that imposed on his co‑accused Mr Surdhar.