Sam Mark Oliver [2019] EWCA Crim 1197
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Regina v Sam Mark Oliver [2019] EWCA Crim 1391 concerned an appeal against sentence by a man convicted of handling stolen goods, which the Court of Appeal dismissed.
The appellant pleaded guilty on the day of trial to handling stolen goods contrary to section 22(1) of the Theft Act 1968 and was sentenced by His Honour Judge James Spencer QC at Leeds Crown Court to two and a half years’ imprisonment, with a costs order of £790.
Overnight on 27 November 2017 a Volkswagen Golf valued at £32,000 was stolen during a house burglary in Kirkheaton near Huddersfield. The occupants were at home in bed. Only the car keys were taken from the house before the car was driven away. A week later, on 4 December 2017, a police officer saw the stolen vehicle bearing false plates being driven on the M62 towards Leeds. When stopped, the appellant was the sole occupant. In the boot were three other sets of false number plates. He told police it was not his car and he was driving it from Oldham to Leeds for someone else, but refused to name that person. He was searched and found to have £790 in cash, which was seized. In a prepared statement at interview he repeated that the Golf did not belong to him and he had been told to drive it from Oldham to Leeds, but declined to name the source or destination. He said the money was to buy carpets.
Mr Oliver, born on 17 October 1989 and thus aged 29 at sentence, had six previous convictions for twelve offences, including a handling offence in 2015 for which he received a community order and battery in 2011 for which he received eight weeks’ imprisonment. The sentencing judge found that the appellant had been driving the car for someone else, had previous convictions for similar offending, understood things better than a teenager at his age, and was cynically involved in crime for acquisitive reasons. The judge concluded that the sentence could not be suspended and allowed ten per cent credit for the late guilty plea, which led to the sentence of 30 months’ imprisonment.
The judge had applied the Sentencing Council’s Guideline on Handling Offences. The car’s value of £32,000 placed the offence in category 2 (high value goods between £10,000 and £100,000). The judge assessed culpability as high, treating the appellant as in possession of very recently stolen goods from a domestic burglary, which placed the case in category 2A with a starting point of three years’ imprisonment. The judge’s sentence reflected a notional sentence after trial of about 33 months, three months below that starting point.
On appeal Mr Thomas submitted that the sentence was manifestly excessive. He argued that possession a week after the burglary could not be described as very recent and that culpability should have been assessed as medium, giving a starting point of one year and a range up to 18 months. He further submitted that the charge was specifically “assisting in the realisation of stolen goods” and that, even if high culpability was appropriate, greater allowance should have been made for the car’s value being towards the bottom of the category 2 bracket. Mr Thomas also relied on personal mitigation: the appellant had a four-year-old daughter, his partner was expecting another child in July 2019, his father had died recently, he had a good work ethic and had completed unpaid work from a previous sentence, and he had not been convicted of any offence since December 2017. None of this mitigation had been mentioned by the sentencing judge.
Mr Justice Nicol, giving the judgment of the court, rejected each of these submissions. The court held that the judge was entitled to conclude that possession only a week after the burglary constituted very recent possession for the purposes of the guidelines. The court emphasised that the car was found with false number plates and three further sets of false plates were in the boot, which reinforced the judge’s conclusion about the close connection between the burglary and the handling. Alternatively, this showed a professional and sophisticated offence, another marker of higher culpability. The court rejected Mr Thomas’s argument that it could not be established that the appellant knew about the plates in the boot, holding that he was driving the car in which the additional plates were found. The court also noted that significant additional harm could be taken into account because the goods were taken from a domestic burglary, which can move a sentence into a different category range. The court saw no significance in the particular form of handling charged.
The court acknowledged that the car’s value was below half of the category 2 range and accepted the other mitigating factors put forward by Mr Thomas. However, it weighed against these the aggravating features, notably the appellant’s previous convictions including the previous conviction for handling. Taking all matters together, the court concluded that a sentence of 33 months after trial would not have been manifestly excessive. The court noted that Mr Thomas rightly took no issue with the allowance of ten per cent credit for the guilty plea.
In short, the Court of Appeal held that the sentencing judge was entitled to treat possession one week after a domestic burglary as very recent and to find high culpability, and that the sentence of 30 months’ imprisonment after ten per cent credit was not manifestly excessive.