The Court of Appeal has ruled that it cannot replace a sentence imposed on a juvenile with a prison term on a sentence severity appeal, even where the appellant has since reached adulthood. It has not yet decided whether the sentence should stand or be quashed.
The ruling concerned an appeal by Reece Lambert against a three-year-and-two-month detention sentence imposed by the Circuit Court on 8 November 2021. Lambert was 17 at sentencing and 18 when his appeal was listed for hearing. The judgment, delivered on 2 March 2023, records that he was then detained in Wheatfield Prison.
The age issue was raised by the Court of Appeal. After hearing submissions, both sides agreed that the court could intervene if the sentence was too severe and substitute an appropriate term of imprisonment. The Director of Public Prosecutions also asked the court to depart from an earlier Court of Appeal decision, DPP v PMcC, which had addressed limits on resentencing in an undue leniency review involving a person sentenced as a child who later became an adult.
The court said the governing provision, section 3(2) of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993, limited it to imposing a sentence or order that could have been imposed on the convicted person at the trial court. Because Lambert was a child when sentenced, the court said, the Children Act 2001 prohibited the Circuit Court from imposing imprisonment.
The court accepted that the parties’ arguments had force but concluded that adopting them would require the court to add words to the legislation. It was not persuaded to do so, and said it was not convinced that PMcC should be overturned. It therefore held that its options were to quash the sentence without making a further order, or to reject the appeal and leave the sentence in place.
The court did not decide the severity appeal in this ruling. It said the parties would have an opportunity to consider the ruling before the court proceeded to assess the appeal’s merits and decide whether the sentence should stand or be quashed.