It was the Crown’s case that our client had stabbed her mother’s partner. The Crown relied on CCTV footage and a number of witnesses who saw, and spoke to our client, after the incident to prove their case. Our client accepted that an incident had taken place however, we had real concerns about her mental health at the time. We obtained, and considered, hundreds of pages of third party material which demonstrated just how vulnerable our client actually was.

We instructed both a specialist child psychologist, and child psychiatrist, to meet with our client; one of which concluded that there had not been any substantial period in our client’s life where she had not suffered trauma. Our psychiatrist confirmed that in her expert opinion, our client had the defence of diminished available to her. The Crown, however, did not accept this evidence and instructed their own psychiatrist to assess our client. Their expert was also of the same view. Despite this, and extensive representations, the Crown refused to accept a guilty plea to manslaughter from our client and maintained that they were proceeding with the charge of murder.

On the day of our client’s trial, however, they confirmed that they would accept a guilty plea to the lesser offence and the offence of murder was not proceeded with. What followed was a complex two day sentencing hearing in which legal submissions were made about our clients level of retained responsibility. After considering the submissions that we made on our client’s behalf, our client was sentenced to a sentence of 5 years detention with an extended licence period of 4 years.

The Attorney General subsequently referred our client’s case to the Court of Appeal as an unduly lenient sentence. After considering the submissions that were made on our client’s behalf, the Court allowed the sentence to stand.

Our client was represented Kath Jatter, a senior solicitor in our Croydon Crime Team and in Court by Oliver Weetch from 2 Kings Bench Walk and Brenda Campbell KC from Garden Court Chambers