England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Decisions

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION

		Royal Courts of Justice The Strand London WC2A 2LL
		21 October 2008

Tuesday 21 October 2008

LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I will ask Mr Justice David Clarke to give the judgment of the court.

MR JUSTICE DAVID CLARKE:

1. On 17 June 2008, in the Crown Court at Blackfriars, the applicant, Yucef Guessoum, pleaded guilty to seven counts of handling stolen goods. On 18 July 2008 he was sentenced by His Honour Judge Karsten to two years' imprisonment on each count, concurrently. His application for leave to appeal against that sentence has been referred to the full court by the Registrar. We shall grant leave.
2. The court also made, as appears from the sentencing remarks, a recommendation for deportation. Counsel informs us that that order was removed on application made to the judge later the same day under the slip rule. Unfortunately, that later decision does not appear on the record sheet drawn up by the Crown Court and transmitted to this court together with the appeal papers. It is a matter of concern that it remains on the court record because a recommendation for deportation is likely to have been transmitted to the immigration authorities for further consideration and action at an appropriate time. We have no reason to doubt Mr Siddle's assertion in this respect. We therefore direct that the court correct its record accordingly and notify all parties to whom the erroneous record was initially transmitted.
3. The facts of the case are these. In March 2007 the police conducted a covert operation in order to detect the transmission of stolen property and drugs and to apprehend those involved in such activities. A shop was opened in an area of North London. It was manned by undercover officers who let it be known within the community that this was a place to which stolen goods and drugs may be bought for profit.
4. On 16 November 2007 the officers in the shop were introduced to a man called Sam (who was in fact the appellant). He showed one of the officers a laptop computer. The officer agreed to buy it for £140. The laptop had been stolen in a domestic burglary earlier the same day.
5. On the following day the appellant made two further visits to the shop, one with a Hewlett Packard Pavilion laptop, for which he was paid £150, and later a Sony laptop, for which he was paid £460. Each of those had been stolen the previous day -- one in a residential burglary and one from a public house.
6. Two days later a similar transaction occurred involving another laptop. Two days after that the appellant made a further visit with a laptop, two cameras and an iPod, all of which had been stolen in a residential burglary two days earlier. For those he received £300.
7. The final visit that the appellant made was on 30 November 2007 when a digital camera and a laptop changed hands. They had been stolen six hours earlier in a residential burglary.
8. At that point the appellant ceased his visits to the shop. The police operation continued and the shop remained open for business for a number of further months.
9. In March 2008 the appellant was arrested. He pleaded guilty at an early stage to the offence of handling stolen goods. He had a previous conviction for an offence of handling stolen goods (a single incident) for which he had been fined.
10. There was a pre-sentence report. The appellant is an unemployed man of Algerian extraction. He had been given leave to remain in the United Kingdom and, we are told, had obtained citizenship. He is married. His wife was then still in Algeria. He was on state benefits, sending money to his wife. He was short of money. The author of the pre-sentence report was satisfied that he had committed the offences for financial gain. He maintained that he only received a few pounds for each of the items of electrical goods which he had handled. He was considered by the author of the report to minimise his responsibility, claiming that he did not know the goods were stolen. He complained also of problems related to his mental and physical health. He has a drop-foot condition in both legs which impairs his mobility and gait, and no doubt thereby his employability. He also suffered from some depressive symptoms, but the general practitioner's letter did not suggest that any of these conditions called for the requirement of special treatment or special reports.
11. We have today received a letter from the appellant. Having waived his right to attend, he has nevertheless written to the court. He informs the court that through the actions of the health care staff at Ford Prison and the local NHS Trust he is much healthier in mind and body.
12. The judge was invited by counsel on both sides to consider the guideline case of R v Webbe and Others [2001] EWCA Crim 1217, [2002] 1 Cr App R (S) 22, in which this court considered in detail the advice of the Sentencing Advisory Panel. Counsel for the Crown, as can be seen from reading through the exchanges, having opened the case to the judge, was careful not to put the case too high and indeed, when the judge suggested a higher level of seriousness, drew the judge back from it. The total value of the items handled was in the area of £5,000, but a particular aggravating feature was the closeness in time between the burglaries and these transactions, all but one being burglaries of dwelling houses. The systematic nature of this activity over a two week period was clearly an important factor. So far as value was concerned, the decision in Webbe suggests that, where prison sentences are indicated, a range of one to four years is appropriate, where the value handled is up to £100,000. Longer sentences are appropriate if the value is significantly higher or where the offence bears the hallmarks of a professional commercial operation.
13. In passing sentence the learned judge set out what he regarded as the aggravating features of the case and indicated that, had this been a contested trial, he would have imposed three years, but in view of the early plea of guilty he imposed the sentence of two years, concurrently on each count.
14. Other cases were also considered by the learned judge. One is on each side of the present case in terms of seriousness in our view. In R Charlcroft and Campbell [2002] 2 Cr App R(S) 42, in which judgment was given by Leveson J (as he then was), sentences of 15 months and 12 months were reduced to eight months' imprisonment in the case of a jeweller and an associate who were prepared to and did handle stolen silverware brought to their shop by undercover officers on a number of occasions. In the course of those visits the officers made the jeweller and the offender aware that this was stolen property. In fact, it was unclaimed property seized by the police in the course of investigating crime, which is why the offences were charged not as handling stolen property but attempting to handle stolen property. Eventually the officers brought a set of candlesticks valued at over £10,000 which the two offenders agreed, after lengthy discussion and bargaining, to buy for £320. Those items were never actually handed over.
15. When giving judgment, Leveson J described the facts in detail and considered them in the context of Webbe in which he had also been a member of the court. There was additional mitigation in Charlcroft which was not taken into account by the judge. Such mitigation is not present in the instant case before us. The offences arose from targeting by the police. The items were not actually stolen property and therefore these were victimless crimes which was regarded by the court as amounting to some mitigation.
16. We turn to the more serious of the cases referred to, R v Gwyer [2002] 2 Cr App R(S) 56, in which a sentence of five years imposed after a contested trial was reduced to four years' imprisonment. The appellant there was involved in handling antiques stolen in residential burglaries. The items were then sold on at auctions. The prices these items fetched at auction totalled £16,000, but their true value, it was held, must have been significantly higher. In that case there was an additional mitigating factor (nor present here) in that the case was very much delayed; two and a half years had elapsed in all. There was evidence of considerable stress affecting the appellant arising from that delay.
17. In our judgment Gwyer demonstrates that the relatively low value of goods may not be as important a factor as the nature of the offending. It was cited to His Honour Judge Karsten and he had it in mind. In our judgment there were such aggravating features here arising from the closeness and the nature of the offending to justify a severe sentence even after a plea of guilty. The learned judge indicated that he would have imposed three years but for the early plea. In the end the question for us is whether the judge pitched this sentence manifestly too high.
18. After considering this case against the background of the authorities cited, we have concluded that he did. In our view the case would have merited two years after a trial, not three. We give effect to this conclusion by quashing the sentence of two years and substituting one of 16 months' imprisonment. The appeal is allowed to that extent.