Minimum terms
High Court setting of minimum terms for mandatory life sentences under the Criminal Justice Act 2003
Neutral Citation Number: [2006] EWHC 2618 (QB)
Case No: 2004/609/MTS
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Date: 26/10/2006
Before:
MR JUSTICE CALVERT-SMITH
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Between:
REGINA
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Dean West Agbegah
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Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
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MR JUSTICE CALVERT-SMITH
Mr Justice Calvert-Smith :
1. On 19th July 2002 Dean West Agbegah who is now 39 years old was convicted by a jury at the Central Criminal Court of murder committed between 29th September and 2nd October 2001. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. The judge was the late HH Judge David Stokes QC. He is an “existing prisoner” within the meaning of Schedule 22 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003. No minimum term has been set by the Home Secretary. It now falls to me to determine, pursuant to s 269 of that Act, the minimum period which he should now serve before the early release provisions apply to him.
2. The judge's recommendation to the Home Secretary on the minimum period the defendant should serve was 16 years, based upon the then operative letter of practice dated 10 February 1997, that is to say a starting point of 14 years. Lord Woolf CJ agreed with the comments of the trial judge, but recommended a lower minimum term of 14 years.
3. The defendant indicated in letters sent to the Court in March and November of 2004 and March of 2005 that representations on his behalf would be made by the solicitors who acted for him at trial. In March 2005 those solicitors informed the court that they no longer acted for the defendant. No reply was received from the defendant to a letter informing him of the withdrawal of his solicitors and inviting him to make representations.
4. There has been no response from the Victim Liaison Officer to a request in June 2004 to contact the victim's family for the purpose of submitting a statement.
5. I set out the summary of the case which the judge incorporated into his recommendation to the Home Secretary.
“The defendant was released from serving a 6 year sentence for wounding with intent on the 27th September 2001. He went to live with his younger sister who was 32 at the time of her death and who lived alone in a one bedroom flat in Kennington. Although all seemed well between the defendant and his sister on the day of his release and on 28th September by Saturday the 29th she had become frightened of him and went to the police station to inform them of her concerns. She made it plain that she did not want the defendant staying with her any longer. During the early hours of 30th September she telephoned the police to attend her flat. Police arrived at half past midnight. She appeared to the police officers who saw her to be frightened and was complaining that her brother had been trying to gain entry to the flat. She repeated that she did not want him to stay. Police found a parcel containing £1500 which had been pushed through the letterbox with a note from the defendant to his sister to look after the money. The money was his. In fact his sister gave it to the police for safekeeping. The police left and, from what the defendant was to say during interview he managed to gain entry to the flat during the early hours of that Sunday morning. There then followed a quarrel between him and his sister over where the money was, he not believing her account that she had given it to the police. He then put his arm around her neck and throttled her to death. Having killed her, the defendant then bathed her changed her clothing and put her on a chair in the sitting room with her feet propped up on a footstool. He was arrested some days later.”
6. The judge found little mitigation. The defendant came from an unhappy background with a family life which the judge described as “indeed wretched”. He had always admitted manslaughter and did not give evidence in his own defence. No weapon of offence was used – although as the judge pointed out the disparity in physique made a weapon unnecessary. There were aggravating features. The victim was the defendant's sister who had only agreed to put him up “out of the goodness of her heart”. Another sister gave evidence that the defendant had told her that in order to gain entry to the victim's flat on the night of the murder he had “sweet-talked” her. The defendant had a dreadful record. Following a comparatively minor offence of assault occasioning actual in 1987 for which he was fined, in 1989 he was sentenced to a total of 7 years imprisonment for two offences of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and one of aggravated burglary threatened an elderly householder with a knife and beat him with fists. In 1993 he was sentenced to 44 months imprisonment for robbery of a newsagent in which a meat cleaver and kitchen knife were used to threaten the staff. In 1996 he was convicted of an offence of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. The offence involved an attack on a complete stranger in which the victim was stabbed 10 times and very seriously injured.
7. Under the terms of section 269 of and Schedule 21 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 the starting point for an offence would now be fifteen years. This Court has to have regard to the term of 14 years recommended by the Lord Chief Justice and 16 years by the trial judge. The term now fixed must not be greater than in the opinion of the court the Home Secretary would have been likely to set before December 2002.
8. Having reviewed the case I believe that the Home Secretary would have fixed the term at 15 years.
9. The appropriate minimum term in accordance with Schedule 22, paragraph 6 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 is therefore 15 years less 9 months 12 days spent in custody in respect of the proceedings before conviction.
10. Before parting with the case I wish to point out some of the remarks of Lord Woolf which preceded his recommendation.
“This man is obviously extremely dangerous and the parole board is going to have to pay careful attention to his record prior to recommending his release.”