The youth appeared in the Magistrate’s Court on 2 October 2023 to be sentenced for perverting the course of justice.
He was sentenced to seven months of youth detention for misrepresenting what had occurred during a grave and criminal assault by falsely suggesting that a person had used a hammer.
However, following an appeal in the Royal Court on 30 November 2023, the Bailiff found that “the sentence imposed was unsound” and substituted the man’s remaining time in youth custody with a sentence of 110 hours of community service.
Bailiff Sir Timothy Le Cocq found that the Magistrate, Bridget Shaw, had not taken into account the man’s late “change of heart” about his willingness to do community service, and had sentenced the man “based on a misunderstanding” that he had re-offended since a previous community service order.
Pictured: The Bailiff, Sir Timothy Le Cocq, said the Magistrate had failed to take into account the young man’s late “change of heart” over community service.
The man’s original offence of perverting the course of justice took place on on 31 October 2021 when he was 19 years old.
In between the offence in October 2021 and his sentencing almost two years later, the youth was sentenced to 200 hours of community service in May 2022.
Ahead of his sentencing on 2 October 2023, a pre-sentencing report was compiled which found the man to be “unwilling to undergo a further period of Community Service currently”.
It explained: “Although [the youth] successfully completed 200 hours of Community Service in March 2023, he is reluctant to undertake any further hours as a direct alternative to custody. This has been discussed at length with him, however, he remains unwilling to consent to a further Community Service Order being imposed.”
Therefore, the pre-sentencing report was “unable to make a firm community-based recommendation” due to the youth’s aversion to community service, but confirmed that he had been asked to “further reconsider his position in relation to Community Service prior to sentencing”.
At the sentencing hearing on 28 September 2023 – four days before the sentencing – the youth’s lawyer informed the the Magistrate that there had been a “significant change” in the youth’s position and he was now prepared to undertake community service.
However, when the Magistrate came to sentence the youth on 2 October, she described him as “unwilling to respond to non-custodial sentences”.
In the appeal, the Bailiff found that there was “no exploration” from the Magistrate about the reasons for the youth’s “change of heart”.
Sir Timothy said: “It is entirely open to the Magistrate to take a cautious view of any late expression of a change of heart, but it was, in our view, in the light of such a submission from counsel, incumbent upon the learned Magistrate to explore with counsel or with the Appellant himself the reasons for such a change.”
The Bailiff also found that the Magistrate had misunderstood the timeline of the events, and “operated on the assumption” that the youth had perverted the course of justice after he had completed his previous community service order, when this had in fact taken place before.
Sir Timothy said: “This was an error of fact and, in our view, must inevitably have undermined the conclusion of the learned Magistrate given the prominence of the point made in her sentencing remarks.”
Finally, the Bailiff found that the Magistrate did not give “sufficient weight” to the fact that the youth “had already successfully completed a significant period of community service”.
Due to these three factors, the Bailiff found that the youth had been sentenced “on a mistaken appreciation of the material facts” and concluded that “the sentence imposed was unsound”.
Sir Timothy explained: “In the absence of testing the [youth’s] apparent change of heart, the Magistrate should, in our view, have proceeded on the basis that he was willing to undertake community service, and not that the re-offending before her had taken place after the completion of the last period of community service.
“Accordingly, in our judgment, there was no sufficient basis to find that the Appellant in this matter had a history of failure to respond to non-custodial penalties and was unable or unwilling to respond to them.”
The Bailiff, sitting alongside Jurats Austin-Vautier and Berry, overturned the seven months youth custody sentence, of which the youth had already served two months of.
The custodial sentence was substituted it for 110 hours of community service – the equivalent of the youth’s remaining five months of youth custody.
