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Royal Courts of Justice

The Strand

London WC2

Thursday 2 October 1997

B e f o r e:

THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND

(Lord Bingham of Cornhill )

MR JUSTICE POTTS

and

MR JUSTICE BUTTERFIELD

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R E G I N A

- v -

TONY AVIS

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Computer Aided Transcription by

Smith Bernal, 180 Fleet Street, London EC4

Telephone 0171-831 3183

(Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)

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MR RODERICK M T PRICE appeared on behalf of THE APPELLANT

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J U D G M E N T

(As Approved by the Court )

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THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE: We would like to adjourn this case and invite the Attorney General to instruct an amicus with a view to looking at the level of sentencing for the other major offences under the Firearms Act 1968 as well as the section 16A offence. You will be familiar with the case of R v Francis in which some of the earlier decisions on sentencing for possessing firearms with intent to endanger life were disapproved, and it seems to us that the time has come where we really ought to try to draw the threads together and construct a consistent pattern of sentencing rather than throwing darts into a board which is not very clearly numbered. That is not a very good analogy.

We propose to adjourn the matter and to invite the Attorney General to instruct counsel as an amicus (not as a prosecutor) to address us on the wider sentencing picture, not just the appropriate level of sentencing for section 16A, although no doubt he will draw attention to the will of Parliament as expressed in 1994, but also the proper approach to sentencing for the other major offences. I have in mind possessing firearms with intent to endanger life and with intent to commit an indictable offence and with intent to resist arrest and so on.

I am not absolutely sure -- I may quite well be wrong -- that Dr Thomas is correct when he sets out the table of maximum penalties in the Current Sentencing Practice . He appears to give a maximum of 14 years for an offence which, as I understand it, has a maximum of life.

MR PRICE: My Lord, that is right. It is life according to Archbold.

THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE: I think if anybody is going to tell Dr Thomas that he is wrong, we had better have an amicus. That is the order we will make today. I am sorry that it prolongs the period of waiting but it will not, I am sure, mean that your client will be kept in prison any longer than he would have been anyway.

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