The sentencing of Valdo Calocane to a hospital and restrictions order, rather than imprisonment, was not unduly lenient, the Lady Chief Justice and two judges have held
Calocane, 32, killed two students, Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, in Nottingham in June 2023, then attacked and killed Ian Coates and stole his van, which he deliberately drove at speed into another man, Wayne Birkett, causing serious brain injury, and two other victims, Sharon Miller and Marcin Gawronski, causing serious injury. All were random attacks.
Psychiatric experts agreed Calocane was suffering from treatment-resistant paranoid schizophrenia and would not have perpetrated the acts if he had not been experiencing acute psychosis.
The Solicitor General referred the case, arguing the judge failed to reflect multiple aggravating features, take sufficient account of the harm caused and of evidence the offender’s culpability was not extinguished by his mental illness, and was wrong not to include a penal element in the sentence.
Handing down judgment this week, in R v Calocane [2024] EWCA Crim 490, however, Lady Carr held the judge made no error of principle in his approach. Expressing deep sympathy for the victims of the attack, Lady Carr said: ‘Here, as the judge plainly recognised, the consequences of the offending were of the greatest seriousness.
‘But, as the expert evidence made clear, the offender’s mental condition was such that the level of responsibility he retained for that offending lay at the lower end of the scale.’
Lady Carr said: ‘The key factor in a case like this, when deciding whether or not a penal element is required, is the strength of the link between the offender’s impairment and the offending in question.’
She said the offence ‘would not have taken place but for the offender’s schizophrenia.’
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