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	England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Decisions
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Decisions >> Attorney General's Reference No 58 of 2000 [2000] EWCA Crim 87 (16 November 2000) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2000/87.html Cite as: [2000] EWCA Crim 87

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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION

		Royal Courts of Justice The Strand London WC2
		Thursday 16th November 2000

1. LORD JUSTICE KENNEDY: Her Majesty's Attorney-General seeks to refer the case to this Court pursuant to section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, and we grant the necessary leave.
2. The offender is Anthony Vincent Wynne, who is now 32 years of age, having been born on 1st October 1968. In the Crown Court at Manchester he pleaded guilty to one count of causing death by dangerous driving. On the 14th July 2000 he was sentenced to 30 months' imprisonment and disqualified from driving for 4 years and thereafter until he had taken an extended driving test.
3. On 22nd May 1999 he spent the afternoon at a snooker club and then at a public house. He left the public house at about 6.30 pm. He was not the holder of a driving licence. He had a provisional driving licence issued in 1991 but had never taken a driving test.
4. He admitted, when interviewed, he had consumed one bottle of Holsten Pils at 1.00 pm and two pints of Holsten Pils at a public house, consuming his last drink at 4.30 pm. He went at 6.30 from the public house to the house where he lived with his girlfriend. There was then an argument and he demanded the keys of a Rover 213 car which he had purchased for her use.
5. Shortly afterwards that car was seen by two pedestrians being driven at a speed which they estimated to be about 50 miles per hour along a single carriageway road subject to a 30 mile per hour speed limit. The car appeared to the observers to be wandering from the kerb edge to the centre of the road and an oncoming car was seen to pull into its left. The car then went over a bridge and as did so one of the witnesses said that the wheels lifted off the road surface.
6. Other witnesses who saw the car immediately before the accident spoke of its high speed and the sound of the engine revving. Immediately after crossing the bridge the Rover collided head on with a motorcyclist, on his own side of the road, travelling in the opposite direction. The motorcycle was forced back into a barrier. The rider of the motorcycle was taken to hospital where he died from multiple injuries. His pillion passenger was his son, aged 7, who suffered leg injuries.
7. The offender got out of his car and left the scene immediately. He went to the police station at 1.30 pm on the following day, about 18 hours later. The police accident investigator concluded that at the time of the accident the Rover car was on the wrong side of the road and was being driven at a speed of about 52 miles per hour, certainly within the range of 47 to 57 miles per hour.
8. Of course, by leaving the scene of the accident and not reporting to a police station until the time that he did, the offender effectively prevented police officers investigating to see what his blood alcohol level was at the time when the accident occurred. It is impossible not to have misgivings about that state of affairs.
9. In the Attorney-General's Reference No 21 of 2000 (R v Hartwell), this Court indicated the approach which, in circumstances such as these, the Court is liable to adopt in relation to an offender. It was said, and we accept rightly said, that in the absence of evidence a court is entitled to draw adverse inferences depending on the facts of the case against an offender, as to the amount of alcohol consumed by him and the amount of it in his blood at the time when he is involved in an accident. But it does depend on the circumstances of the case.
10. In the present case this offender was clearly ably represented because there was tendered to the Crown, accepted by the Crown, or at any rate accepted by the court, if not by the Crown a basis of plea, which reads as follows:

" 1 He got in the car following a serious domestic argument with his partner.

2 The accident occurred about a minute after he had got in the car... It was the first time he had driven over the bridge.

3 His recollection is that he was travelling at approximately 40 miles per hour going over the bridge.

4 [Most significantly] Alcohol did not play any part in his manner of driving - he maintains his account given in interview regarding the small amount he had had to drink many hours before.

5 The defendant handed himself in to the police on the following day voluntarily."

11. In those circumstances the basis of plea having been accepted, it was necessary for the sentencing judge to deal with the matter on the basis that alcohol did not play any part in this manner of driving. We have to say that we do not think the basis of plea should have been accepted by the sentencing judge. It fettered the hands of the sentencer, which should not have happened in this case.
12. That said, there are still, as was pointed out to us by Dr Thomas on behalf of the Attorney-General, aggravating factors. The offender was an unqualified driver. He was a driver who left the scene of the accident immediately. Even on the basis of plea, he was driving in an aggressive frame of mind having just had an argument with his girlfriend. He caused the collision by driving his car on the wrong side of the road and at an excessive speed. He did absolutely nothing to ensure that there was help as soon as possible for those whom he had injured.
13. There are mitigating circumstances, which have been drawn to our attention helpfully by Mr Toal on behalf of the offender. He did surrender himself in the circumstances that we have indicated. He had driven only a short distance. He did, as the judge accepted, plead guilty at the earliest opportunity, and perhaps most significantly of all, he has shown every sign of genuine remorse. That was evident not only to the sentencing judge but also in the documentation placed before this Court which includes a letter written by the offender very recently indeed. He attributes the death of his father on the first anniversary of this accident to some form of divine justice on him. Whether or not the attribution be right, it does show at least that he is conscious of the enormous harm he has inflicted on the man who died and the seven year old boy who was riding on that motorcycle as a pillion passenger.
14. Clearly the absence of the offender from his own family is a cross which the family has to bear and of which he is also conscious. But taking all of those matters into account, it is submitted by Dr Thomas that the sentence here, bearing in mind for example the three authorities to which he has invited our attention, should have been of the order of 5 years. He invited us to consider R v Mallone [1996] 1 Cr App R(S) 221, Attorney-General's Reference No 69 of 1996 (R v Jackson) [1996] 2 Cr App R(S) 360, and R v Barber [1997] 1 Cr App R(S) 65.
15. As Mr Toal points out, in the case of Mallone, there was a longer period of bad driving. There are other factors, in the other two cases, which can be said to some extent to distinguish them, including for example in the case of Barber, the fact that there was obviously some alcohol present, and the offender had been disqualified from driving as a result of taking excess alcohol.
16. But in Jackson, Lord Taylor CJ, said this:

"In the present case we consider that the aggregate of aggravating features rendered this a very serious case. The offender has flouted the laws as regards licencing and insurance on a number of occasions. [We interpose, this present appellant did have a previous conviction albeit some years ago, which indicated some disregard for the laws in that direction.] He was driving too fast; he was driving on a road he had no business to be driving on in that direction; [in the present case it was on the wrong side of the road] he was not keeping a proper look out; and he failed to stop after the accident. That is a catalogue of aggravating circumstances which, in our judgment, required a longer sentence than that imposed by the trial judge."

17. In that case the sentence of 3 years was increased to one of 5 years.
18. That, as it seems to us, gives some indication of the sort of sentence which ought to have been imposed in this case in the court below. It is important in this category of offence for sentencers to impose meaningful sentences because the public are rightly anxious when people who are travelling along roads or walking along pavements are killed as a result of the dangerous driving of a motorist. They require that meaningful sentences be imposed upon offenders. In the present circumstances, we regard the sentence which was imposed of 30 months' imprisonment as unduly lenient. Even bearing in mind the element of double jeopardy, we consider that that sentence must now be one of three-and-a-half years' imprisonment. Accordingly, to that extent, this sentence now stands in its altered form.