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
		25 June 2009

Thursday 25 June 2009

THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE:

1. The appellant, Douglas Vinter, is 39 years old. On 21 April 2008, in the Crown Court at Teesside, before the Recorder (His Honour Judge Fox QC), he pleaded guilty to murder. He was sentenced to imprisonment for life. The judge specified a whole life term. Vinter now appeals against sentence by leave of the single judge, who granted the necessary extension of time.
2. On 29 May 1996 the appellant was sentenced to imprisonment for life following his conviction for the murder of a colleague at work. Having passed the life sentence, the judge assessed the minimum term at ten years' imprisonment. That term reflected the fact that the victim of the murder had been in possession of the knife with which the appellant later killed him. In the course of a struggle the appellant wrested the knife from him and stabbed him with it no less than thirteen times in the ensuing struggle. The appellant pleaded guilty to manslaughter, but following a trial the jury found the case of murder proved.
3. While the appellant was serving his sentence for that offence he met the deceased. From about 2003 onwards he had been allowed home visits. On these occasions he stayed at his mother's home. During the course of a home visit he met the deceased and they began a relationship.
4. On 4 August 2005 the appellant was released on life licence. Almost immediately he moved in to live with the deceased and her four children. The couple married on 27 July 2006. There were concerns among the deceased's family and friends about the nature of the relationship. They were concerned about matters of domestic violence, although none was reported to the police. However, they had seen the deceased injured. Another member of the family had seen the appellant throw the deceased against a wall. In his interviews with the police for the offence with which we are immediately concerned, the appellant admitted that he had used violent language towards her.
5. Not long after the marriage, on 31 December 2006 the appellant was involved in a fight between several men in a public house. He was charged with affray. His licence was revoked. In due course, on 5 July 2007, he pleaded guilty to affray and was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. He was released on licence again in December 2007 as a result of favourable reports which indicated that he was a model prisoner.
6. The appellant returned to live with his wife. Two weeks before she was killed, the victim confided in a friend that she wanted to leave the appellant but that she was too frightened to do so. However, on 5 February 2008 the appellant moved out of their home and returned to live with his mother. He did not find the situation agreeable. According to one of the children of the deceased, on his departure he emptied all the cupboards in the house, damaged the television set, and removed the deceased's passport. There was no contact between the couple until 10 February.
7. During the evening of 10 February 2008 the deceased had arranged to go out with three of her friends. They went to a public house where the deceased's daughter collected glasses. They went to a second public house but quickly left because they discovered that the appellant was there. They went on to two further public houses, but at both those public houses the appellant appeared. The Crown's case was that the appellant followed the deceased in order to spy on her, to see if she was with anyone else, and to find out what she was doing. It is obvious that he had deliberately followed her. In due course he anticipated that the deceased would return to the public house where her daughter was working. He went ahead of her and was waiting for her when she arrived. He was not alone; he was in the company of two others. According to one of them the appellant had not only been drinking alcohol but he had also taken cocaine.
8. Trouble flared up outside the public house. The appellant realised that the victim was on the premises. He was irritated because she, not unreasonably, had asked one of her friends to ask the door staff to keep an eye on him to try to ensure that there would be no trouble. He was also irritated by his belief that her daughter was sending the victim text messages as she was in a different room to him. The door staff tried to intervene, but the appellant, who was physically imposing, warned them off. They backed away. One of the people with whom he was drinking tried to calm the situation, but he too was warned off by the appellant. That man and the friend with whom he had been drinking left the premises.
9. At this stage the victim left the public house. The appellant also left the public house. There was an encounter in the car park and an argument developed. The victim's daughter came out of the premises and tried to persuade her mother to go home with her. The appellant took extreme exception to the daughter's involvement. The argument continued for about twenty minutes. The daughter was sufficiently concerned to contact the police to alert them to the fact that a serious domestic dispute was taking place. The appellant contacted the two men with whom he had been drinking and demanded that they return and take him away from the premises. They arrived at the car park in a car. The appellant ordered the deceased into the car. Her daughter, with some courage, sought to get into the car no doubt to offer some protection to her mother. The appellant forcibly removed her and literally dumped her on the pavement.
10. The argument continued. The appellant alleged that the victim had been involved in a relationship with another man. He indicated that he would take her to the home of this man. However, when they were dropped off at the man's home, he was not there. The appellant and the victim then went to his mother's home, which was nearby.
11. In the meantime, in answer to the daughter's telephone call to the police, police officers had gone to the victim's home. There was no answer. At 1.07am a police officer contacted the victim on her mobile phone to try to ascertain if she was safe. The victim, who was in the control of the appellant, answered the phone and insisted that she was fine, that she was out drinking in Middlesbrough with some female friends, and that she was moving between various public houses. Another of her friends contacted her. She also received assurances from the victim that everything was fine. The friend, however, was concerned because she overheard the appellant tell the victim to make sure that her friend kept out of their business.
12. Precisely what happened after those two telephone calls is unclear. We have no account of it from the deceased. At 1.36am the appellant telephoned the police and he reported that the victim was safe and well. At some time before 2.30am he killed her.
13. Shortly after 2.30am the two men with whom the appellant had been drinking received another call from him demanding that they pick him up. They did so. In the car, using the victim's telephone, the appellant contacted the police and indicated that he wished to report a murder. He gave his mother's address and his name. Shortly afterwards he alighted from the car. He was covered in blood. He told the men in the car that he had killed his wife. He said that he had tried to strangle her, that that had not worked, and that therefore he had used a knife. In the meantime he had telephoned his mother and told her that the police would be on their way. His mother looked about her home and she found the body of the deceased in her kitchen. She immediately contacted the police.
14. A post-mortem examination revealed that the deceased had a broken nose. There was deep and extensive bruising to her neck consistent with a serious attempt at strangulation. She had also suffered four stab wounds to the left side of her chest, three of which had penetrated her lung and one of which had gone through the lung and pierced her heart. The ultimate cause of death was substantial internal bleeding from that wound.
15. Two knives were found at the scene. The blade of one of them was broken. The other was bloodstained.
16. The appellant was arrested at 3.25am. During the course of interviews he admitted his responsibility for killing the deceased.
17. As we understand it, the appellant having pleaded guilty, no submissions in mitigation were advanced on his behalf.
18. The Recorder's sentencing remarks are brief. They are criticised, but there is force in one of the criticisms, we remember that the court must have been filled with tension, anxiety and emotion. The Recorder would have been anxious to ensure that he said no more than was necessary. The way in which he addressed the issue was to say that the appellant was

"incapable of self-control so that your extreme violence to others cannot be viewed as other than continuing for as far as can be seen."

From that he concluded that the appellant "therefore" fell into the relatively small category of people who should be deprived permanently of their liberty in a civilised society. The judge passed the prescribed sentence of life imprisonment and for the reason he had given he concluded that a whole life term was appropriate.

19. The criticisms of the judge's observations can be briefly summarised. The judge directed his sentencing remarks to the future dangerousness of the appellant. So far as dangerousness is concerned, it is well understood that the issue is addressed by the life sentence. The minimum term is designed properly to affect the element of punishment and deterrence for the instant offence. The argument, therefore, is that the judge misdirected himself; that he failed to address the issue correctly; and that in the result a whole life term was inappropriate.
20. It is correct that the emphasis of the judge's sentencing remarks related to the future danger posed by the offender. In the light of that criticism the question for us, however, when we look again at the case is whether a whole life order is appropriate in the context of the seriousness of this crime. The crime, because it was a second murder, fell within the parameters of the exceptionally high seriousness case as described in paragraph 4 of Schedule 21 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The starting point for a case where there is a conviction following an earlier conviction for murder is normally one which attracts a whole life order. We agree that the Schedule should not be applied mechanistically. We accept that paragraph 4 does not provide a sentencing court with tramlines. It is indicative of the normal parameters which should follow a second murder conviction, although in the end the sentencing decision must be specific to the offence for which sentence is passed on an offender who has committed the offence.
21. The starting point therefore is that this murder was committed by an offender who had previously been convicted of murder. We have examined the facts of this case. When the appellant was released on licence he moved in to live with the deceased and he married her. Within a short time he committed another offence. In context it was trivial, but not trivial within its own right. Within a short time of his release from the short sentence of imprisonment he murdered the deceased. Our view is that this violence had an element of premeditation. It followed what can only be described as a kidnap. The determination of the appellant to make sure that the efforts of the victim's daughter to protect her mother were unsuccessful is a powerful indication and is confirmed by the fact that the victim deliberately misinformed the police about where she was, and that she did the same when an anxious friend telephoned her at a time when she had no reason or wish to be with the appellant. No doubt when she was under such pressure she decided that the best way out of the predicament in which she found herself was to appease him.
22. The appellant deliberately put the police off the track. That was not accidental. The victim must have been terrified before he killed her. It is plain to us that the appellant intended death. We draw that conclusion from the fact that he made a determined effort to strangle her. When that failed, instead of repenting of what he had done, he found himself a knife, broke it, and then with another stabbed her and inflicted the fatal injuries which we have described. In our judgment this was a murder which followed a kidnap. It was committed by a man who had a sustained intention that this woman should die.
23. In these circumstances, making such allowance as we can and acknowledging the fact that the appellant pleaded guilty, we conclude that there is no reason whatever to depart from the normal principle that where murder is committed by a man or a woman who is already a convicted murderer, a whole life term sentence is the appropriate period for punishment and deterrence.
24. This appeal is dismissed.