Court of Appeal quashes life sentence and substitutes hospital order  

Mr Hughes was originally sentenced in 2002 to 5 years imprisonment for two offences of arson being reckless as to whether life was endangered. The Attorney General appealed against these sentences and the Court of Appeal increased the sentences to life imprisonment in 2003. In 2005 Mr Hughes was transferred from prison to Ashworth Hospital. In 2008 his responsible medical officer reported that Mr Hughes had been suffering from a serious mental illness for a number of years including at the time of his original sentence. Mr Hughes then launched an appeal on the basis that given his mental illness at the time of sentence he should not have been sentenced to imprisonment and should have been dealt with under the MHA.

The Registrar queried whether the court has jurisdiction to hear the appeal given the previous appeal by the A-G. In a decision in May 2009, [2009] EWCA Crim 841; [2009] Crim L.R. 672 – see Archbold para. 7-118, the court confirmed that the appeal by the A-G did not extinguish Mr Hughes’s right of appeal. At the full hearing of the appeal on 27th April 2010 the Court of Appeal extended the time for appealing and admitted the evidence of two doctors as fresh evidence under section 23 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968. On the basis of that evidence the appeal was allowed and the life sentence was quashed.

Mr Hughes was represented in the Court of Appeal by Mark George Q.C. instructed by Richard Nicholas of RMNJ solicitors , Birkenhead.