Jersey Unreported Judgments

Superior Number Sentencing - manslaughter.

[2017]JRC184

Royal Court

(Samedi)

30 October 2017

The Attorney General

-v-

Michael Charles Brown

Sentencing by the Superior Number of the Royal Court, to which the accused was remanded by the Inferior Number on 25th August, 2017, following a guilty plea to the following charges:

Age:  52.

Plea: Guilty.

Details of Offence:

On 21^st October, 2016, the defendant attended at the victim's flat and attacked him with a knife when he answered the door.  The victim sustained 18 stab wounds to the left side of his torso.  A member of the public found the victim outside his address collapsed on the ground and an ambulance was called.  The victim was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. 

After the defendant had left the victim's flat he went back to his own flat which was in the same residential block as the victim and telephoned 999.  He told the operator he had just stabbed the victim and that he was in his flat with the knife.  The police attended and the defendant was arrested.  The knife was found inside the defendant's flat. 

The defendant attacked the victim because he believed his daughter had been exposing herself to the victim for money.  He had vented his frustrations about this to several people in the days leading up to and on the day of the killing.  The defendant consumed approximately five pints of cider on the day of the killing.

It was established that the defendant had also assaulted the victim three days prior to the killing.

A plea of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility was accepted by the Crown.  The defendant suffered a severe traumatic brain injury when he was the victim of an assault in 2003.  The defendant was suffering from an abnormality of mind, namely frontal lobe injury and organic personality disorder, and his mental responsibility for the killing was substantially impaired. 

Details of Mitigation:

Guilty plea.

Previous Convictions:

43 offences, six relating to violence, no previous convictions since 2003.

Conclusions:

Sentence and Observations of Court:

The Court expressed sympathy to the victim's family and accepted the defendant's culpability was low as a result of his injuries sustained in 2003.

The Court was unanimous that a life sentence was appropriate.

The Court were split regarding the minimum term the defendant should serve with 4 Jurats considering 6 years' imprisonment and 2 considering 5 years' imprisonment.

R. MacRae, Her Majesty's Attorney General for the Crown.

Advocate J. C. Gollop for the Defendant.

JUDGMENT

THE BAILIFF:

1.        The defendant is here to be sentenced on one count of having committed manslaughter by the killing of the victim in October 2016 and the first thing to say is that a full judgment is going to be delivered later and the remarks I am going to make now are very much preliminary. 

2.        This is a case, all manslaughter cases are, where the death of a human being is a tragedy and we start by saying that we express our sympathy to the family of the victim; they have to take prime place in what we are considering. 

3.        The next thing to say is that the Court accepts that the evidence before us today is that this defendant has a low level of culpability as a result of the injuries which he sustained in prison in 2003.  But the Court is unanimously of the view that the risk which he presents is such that the public must be protected on his release from custody and we therefore consider that the life sentence is the only way of achieving that. 

4.        There has not been consensus in the Court as to the minimum period which the defendant should serve.  We think the Crown's conclusions on the minimum period are much too high given the low level of culpability.  Four Jurats considered that the minimum period should be 6 years' imprisonment, two considered it should be 5 years' imprisonment from today, in other words taking into account already time served. 

5.        In the circumstances therefore the sentence is that the defendant is sentenced to a period of life imprisonment and must serve a minimum period of 6 years from today and full reasons for that will follow in a judgment to be delivered as soon as possible. 

6.        We thank counsel and the experts as well for their assistance.

Authorities

Homicide (Jersey) Law 1986.

Criminal Justice (Life Sentences)(Jersey Law 2014.

AG-v-Rzeszowski [2012] JRC 198.

C-v-AG [2015] JCA 159.

R-v-Clive Wood [2009] EWCA Crim 651.

R-v-Beaver [2015] EWCA Crim 653.