BAILII
British and Irish Legal Information Institute


Freely Available British and Irish Public Legal Information

[Home] [Databases] [World Law] [Multidatabase Search] [Help] [Feedback]

England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Decisions


You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Decisions >> Stead, R. v [2025] EWCA Crim 436 (21 March 2025)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2025/436.html
Cite as: [2025] EWCA Crim 436

[New search] [Printable PDF version] [Help]
WARNING: reporting restrictions may apply to the contents transcribed in this document, particularly if the case concerned a sexual offence or involved a child. Reporting restrictions prohibit the publication of the applicable information to the public or any section of the public, in writing, in a broadcast or by means of the internet, including social media. Anyone who receives a copy of this transcript is responsible in law for making sure that applicable restrictions are not breached. A person who breaches a reporting restriction is liable to a fine and/or imprisonment. For guidance on whether reporting restrictions apply, and to what information, ask at the court office or take legal advice. This Transcript is Crown Copyright.  It is not to be reproduced in whole or in part other than in accordance with relevant licence or with the express consent of the Authority.  All rights are reserved.
Neutral Citation Number: [2025] EWCA Crim 436
Case No 2025/00227/A3

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
ON APPEAL FROM THE CROWN COURT AT LEEDS
(HIS HONOUR JUDGE MANSELL KC) [13WD0070324]

Royal Courts of Justice
London
WC2A 2LL
21 March 2025

B e f o r e :


LORD JUSTICE POPPLEWELL
MR JUSTICE HILLIARD
HIS HONOUR JUDGE ANDREW LEES
(Sitting as a Judge of the Court of Appeal Criminal Division)

____________________

R EX

- v -

LEON STEAD

____________________

Computer Aided Transcription of Epiq Europe Ltd,
Lower Ground Floor, 46 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1JE
Tel No: 020 7404 1400; Email: rcj@epiqglobal.co.uk (Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)

____________________

Mr S Khan appeared on behalf of the Appellant
____________________

HTML VERSION OF JUDGMENT
____________________

Crown Copyright ©

    Friday 21 March 2025

    LORD JUSTICE POPPLEWELL: I shall ask Mr Justice Hilliard to give the judgment of the court.

    MR JUSTICE HILLIARD:

  1. On 26 March 2024, in the Crown Court at Leeds, the appellant (then aged 25) pleaded guilty to arson and three offences of assaulting an emergency worker.
  2. On 12 December 2024, he pleaded guilty on re-arraignment to inflicting grievous bodily harm. On the same day he was sentenced as follows: for inflicting grievous bodily harm, 24 months' imprisonment; for arson, 12 months' imprisonment; and for each of the offences of assaulting an emergency worker, concurrent terms of six months' imprisonment. All those sentences were ordered to run consecutively, making 42 months' imprisonment in all.
  3. On 8 January 2025, the matter was relisted and the judge reduced the sentence for inflicting grievous bodily harm to 23 months' imprisonment because of an earlier error when calculating credit for the guilty plea. The result was a total sentence of 41 months' imprisonment.
  4. The appellant now appeals against sentence with the leave of the single judge.
  5. The facts of the case were as follows. On 1 August 2023, the appellant was at a public house in Normanton. He approached two males who were standing at the bar and spoke to one of them. Without provocation or warning, the appellant tried to punch the male. Another male intervened and removed the appellant from the pub. Throughout this time Mark Hobson was standing at the bar watching what was happening. Mr Hobson and the landlord of the pub went outside. Mr Hobson re-entered the pub, obtained a roll of paper and went back outside to tend to a wound to the appellant's head. He spoke to the appellant and hugged him. The appellant then went to the car park at the rear of the pub and spoke to a member of the bar staff. Mr Hobson walked up to the appellant. As Mr Hobson appeared to be moving the appellant away from the staff member, the appellant, without warning or provocation, punched Mr Hobson, knocking him unconscious and causing his head to hit the ground.
  6. Mr Hobson sustained a fracture to the front part of his skull; a fracture to the back of the skull; a fracture to the base of the skull; two fractures to the left side of the jawbone; bleeding at two locations on the right side of the brain; and bruising to the right side of the brain. He remained in hospital for 48 hours under observation before being discharged. He was required to attend an outpatient's clinic and was discharged from the clinic on 4 September 2023.
  7. Mr Hobson made a victim personal statement. Although he did not sustain any permanent physical disability, he had been made very anxious and had a breakdown at work. He described what had happened as a "nightmare". He had had to take eight weeks off work. He still suffers from migraines two or three times a month.
  8. The appellant was arrested for the offence of inflicting grievous bodily harm and released under investigation.
  9. While he was under investigation, on 11 February 2024 Jamie Fitch was working at a Diggerland theme park. At about 7.30 am he could see smoke coming from a flat located at the left side of the main building. He grabbed some ladders and placed them up against the window from where the smoke was coming. He took a sledgehammer, a fire extinguisher and a torch from the workshop and used the sledgehammer repeatedly to hit the external door until it gave way. He ran up the staircase and through the smoke. He found it hard to breathe and had to run downstairs to catch his breath. He then ran back upstairs with a torch. He could hear someone coughing from inside the flat that was burning.
  10. Mr Fitch felt his way around the flat. There was limited visibility. He made his way to the en-suite bathroom. He could hear someone coughing inside. He forced the bathroom door open. He found the appellant lying on the floor. Mr Fitch grabbed hold of the appellant, put him over his shoulders and managed to carry him downstairs and outside. Mr Fitch was struggling to breathe once outside the property. When he turned around, the appellant had run back into the burning property.
  11. For understandable reasons, the judge commended Mr Fitch for his bravery.
  12. The police arrived soon after and the fire was extinguished. However, the appellant refused to leave the property. He stood in the shower and was being verbally hostile. A police officer, PC Jackson, informed the appellant that he was under arrest. The appellant then tried to close the cubicle door to block access to him. PC Jackson forced the door open and placed his foot at the bottom of the door to prevent the appellant from closing it again. The appellant started to punch PC Jackson to the face and head. Another officer, PC O'Neil, deployed his PAVA spray and PC Mohammed went to grab the appellant from behind. The severity of the incident and the threat posed to the officers caused PC O'Neil to press his code zero emergency button.
  13. The appellant turned to PC Mohammed and punched him several times to the face. He then turned back to PC Jackson and began to punch him to the face, back and side of the head. The appellant had soap on his body, making it difficult for the officers to take hold of him. PC O'Neil drew his baton and performed several baton strikes. The appellant came towards him and punched him to the right side of his face. PC Jackson was able to grab one of the appellant's legs, causing him to fall to the floor. PC Mohammed deployed his PAVA spray and the appellant was then placed in handcuffs.
  14. PC O'Neil sustained a bruise above his right eye, swelling to his face and pain in his neck and to the side of his head. PC Mohammed sustained an injury to his cheekbone. PC Jackson sustained bruising to the face and a small cut to his finger.
  15. In a prepared statement, the appellant said that he had had a cigarette and must have failed to put it out when he went to sleep. He woke up and the place was on fire. He said that he was not in his senses due to the smoke and fire. He denied arson and assaulting the officers and then answered "no comment".
  16. The appellant had previous convictions. In 2017, he was sentenced to a community order for criminal damage and possessing a knife. In 2018, he was sentenced to 18 months' detention in a young offender institution for assault occasioning actual bodily harm, breach of a restraining order and battery. In 2021, he was sentenced to 30 weeks' imprisonment for possessing a knife, possessing Class B drugs and assault on an emergency worker.
  17. The pre-sentence report said that the appellant had explained that he had fallen asleep whilst smoking cannabis and thought that the cannabis joint had started the fire. He admitted to previous drug use which, he said, could made him violent. He said that he suffered from periods of anxiety and depression. He was assessed as posing a high risk to the public.
  18. When he passed sentence, the judge said that the grievous bodily harm section 20 offence was culpability C for the purposes of the sentencing guideline, because it was a short-lived assault – one punch. Harm was in category 1, because the injuries were particularly grave and life threatening. A category 1C offence has a starting point of two years' custody and a range extending up to three years. He said that the offence was aggravated by the appellant's previous record.
  19. The arson offence fell within category 2B – culpability B because the appellant was reckless as to whether very serious damage might be caused to property. Harm was in category 2, falling between categories 1 and 3. There was a starting point of nine months' imprisonment and a range extending up to 18 months.
  20. The assaults were category 1A offences, with a starting point of a high level community order and a range extending up to 26 weeks' custody. They were prolonged and persistent assaults; a shod foot was used; the appellant intended to cause fear of serious harm; and the officers were engaged in their public duty.
  21. The judge said that after a trial, the section 20 offence merited a sentence of 30 months' imprisonment. In due course, that was reduced by 15 per cent to 23 months on account of the guilty plea.
  22. The arson offence merited a sentence of 18 months' imprisonment after a trial, said the judge. That was reduced by 25 per cent to 13½ months' imprisonment because of the guilty plea. There was then a further reduction to 12 months on account of totality.
  23. The judge said that the sentence after a trial for all three assaults would have been 12 months' imprisonment. Credit for the guilty pleas reduced the sentence to nine months, and allowance for totality led to a sentence of six months' imprisonment.
  24. It is now argued by Mr Khan on the appellant's behalf that there was no reason for the judge to depart from the suggested starting point for the offence of arson. It is accepted that a sentence consecutive to the sentence for the section 20 offence was justified. No complaint is made about the sentence for the section 20 offence in its own right.
  25. Similarly, no complaint is made about the starting point of 12 months' imprisonment for the offences of assault, or about the amount of credit afforded for the pleas of guilty. However, it is argued that the judge did not take sufficient account of totality in the overall sentence that he passed.
  26. Finally, it is said that the judge did not make any specific identified allowance in accordance with R v Arie Ali [2023] EWCA Crim 232 for the very high prison population which meant that some offenders were being held in police cells in accordance with Operation Safeguard.
  27. We are grateful to Mr Khan for his assistance. We have given his submissions careful consideration.
  28. As we have indicated, no complaint is rightly made about the sentence for the section 20 offence. We do not accept that there was no basis to justify an increase from the starting point for the offence of arson. The guideline provides that the level of harm is assessed by weighing up all the factors of the case. In our judgment, the sentence had to take account of the fact that Mr Fitch had put his life at risk in rescuing the appellant from the fire. Mr Fitch had, of course, chosen to do that, but only because the appellant had started the fire in the first place. Mr Khan concedes the relevance of that factor and that it would justify an increase from the starting point, but he says not as much as the judge concluded. In addition, the appellant was under the influence of cannabis at the time of the arson offence and had been released under investigation for the section 20 offence. In our judgment, the judge was entitled in those circumstances to go to the top of the sentencing range for the arson offence because of the combination of those features.
  29. So far as totality is concerned, it is conceded that the consecutive sentences were appropriate for the different offences. The judge made a small allowance for totality when reducing the sentence for the offence of arson. All of the sentences for the offences of assault were ordered to run concurrently with each other, although there were three separate victims, and a further reduction of three months was made specifically for totality. There are no set allowances for totality. The ultimate question is whether the final sentence is just and proportionate. It seems to us that the judge had the principle of totality well in mind and made adjustments, as he indicated.
  30. Operation Safeguard was triggered in February 2023 and was in place until October 2024. Prisoners were released as a consequence. It was then rescinded. It was not in force when the appellant was sentenced, although he had spent some time on remand during its operation.
  31. We have stood back and considered the case as a whole. It involved a very serious assault by an offender who had already served a sentence of 18 months' detention for an offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. There was then an entirely separate offence of arson, which resulted in someone putting their life at risk to rescue the appellant. Finally, there were persistent assaults on three police officers. The appellant also had, as we have indicated, a previous conviction for an offence of this kind.
  32. We are satisfied that in all these circumstances, in our judgment, a total sentence of 41 months' imprisonment cannot be said to be either wrong in principle or manifestly excessive for this series of offences. Accordingly, this appeal against sentence must be dismissed.
  33. __________________________________

About BAILII - FAQ - Copyright Policy - Disclaimers - Privacy Policy amended on 25/11/2010