The current committee for Home Affairs has confirmed that it has started work to review sentencing policies, after its predecessors set the ball rolling in the last States.
The issue came to the fore recently, after the Court of Appeal reduced a young man’s sentence for importing controlled substances into Guernsey.
In that case the controlled substance was THC and it was contained within ‘candy bars’.
The 768 grams of candy contained a total 1.15grams of THC but the original prison sentence had been imposed based on the total weight – as opposed to the weight of the THC – and was based on sentencing guidelines drawn up in 2002, before edibles had entered the market.
Deputy Marc Leadbeater, President of Home Affairs, was unable to comment on this specific case but he did confirm that his team has already started looking at what work might be carried out under a review of the Justice Framework – which could include proposing changes to sentencing guidelines.
“Sentencing is a matter for the Courts and it is not appropriate for the Committee to comment on specific cases,” he said.
“However, a review of sentencing policy is highlighted as part of the Justice Framework, which was approved by the Assembly last term, and the Committee has directed initial scoping of this work to be progressed alongside the Committee’s other priorities.”
The Committee for Home Affairs is politically responsible for setting sentencing policy, but legal precedent and decisions made on individual cases sits with the judiciary.
Cory Lucas Cabral Le Sauvage was 23-years-old when he was sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison earlier this year by Guernsey’s Royal Court.
He was given a nine and a half year sentence for the importation of THC, a two and a half year sentence for the importation of cannabis to run concurrently, and a consecutive sentence of one year for not giving police the PIN to his phone.
The controlled substance that Le Sauvage and his co-defendant had imported was contained in ‘edibles’, which the court heard were “candy bars which were laced with Δ8–THC”.
The Bailiff allowed Le Sauvage to appeal the length of his prison term after hearing that the weight of the candy bars in this case had distorted the sentencing, as the weight of the controlled substance contained in the bars was only a fraction of their total weight.
In considering whether to allow him to appeal, the Bailiff had said that “it would be helpful to have resolved the question of the correct approach that a sentencing court should take to products such as these ‘edibles’, in particular in seeking to apply the Richards guidelines”.
The Court of Appeal agreed with Le Sauvage’s defence advocate who had argued that the original sentence was manifestly excessive and it reduced it to eight years in total.
That includes a seven year prison sentence for the importation of THC, a two year and six month prison sentence for the importation of cannabis, to run concurrently, and a consecutive one year sentence for the RIPL offence.
The Court of Appeal had said: “Once one understands that the very nature of edibles means that they cannot sensibly be compared to drugs in powder form so far as weight is concerned (there is a vast difference, in terms of harm and street value, between 768 grams of pure cocaine and 768 grams of candy bars containing a total 1.15grams of THC), the approach adopted in the Royal Court has led to an outcome which is manifestly excessive.”