How are criminal practitioners to interpret the latest tinkering by the Court of Appeal in relation to sentencing? In the Christopher Langham case, the Court of Appeal dismissed the mitigation as effectively spurious but reduced the sentence from ten months to six months imprisonment. This kind of tinkering leads to considerable uncertainty and a proliferation of appeals.
It also leads to the inequity of the system being revealed because anyone of modest means, for example on a representation order, would not have been in a position to proceed to the full court because leave was refused by the single judge. This kind of case sends out all of the wrong messages.
Ian M Godfrey, Shepherd Harris & Co, Enfield, Middlesex
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