Lawyers facilitated the release of a prisoner who had been serving the unlawfully imposed sentence
The UK Court of Appeal has lauded London-based solicitor Baxter Jephcott and counsel Stephen Knight for flagging the unlawful sentence imposed on Niki Dean Haycock and helping to set him free from prison, reported the Law Society Gazette.
Haycock had been in jail since 2006, serving an imprisonment for public protection sentence after he pleaded guilty to one count of controlling prostitution for gain and two counts of assaults occasioning actual bodily harm. At the time, an IPP sentence could only be issued for serious offences, which were defined as specified offences punishable by a minimum jail term of 10 years.
Haycock’s offence did not qualify as serious under the UK’s Criminal Justice Act 2003; thus, the court could not set an IPP sentence. However, he was handed one with a minimum 30-month prison term nonetheless.
Jephcott, a solicitor with London firm SL5 Legal, was instructed to act for Haycock on his 12th parole review. He found that Haycock’s sentence was unlawful and called on counsel Knight to represent Haycock before the appeals court.
The judges accepted that the IPP sentence on Haycock was unlawfully imposed. They replaced the original sentence with a seven-year one comprising a five-year term with a two-year extension; since Haycock would have long since finished serving that term by now, he was set free.
“We commend all members of the appellant’s current legal team for the commitment and speed with which they have worked to identify and curtail an enduring serious injustice. Without their endeavours, it would not have been possible for this court to prevent the continuation of that injustice - indeed, it would never have come to light,” wrote lord justice Andrew Edis, president of the appeals court’s criminal division, in the lead judgment, a snippet of which was published by the Gazette.
Edis indicated that it would be impossible to determine how many unlawful IPP sentences may have been imposed. The UK justice ministry noted that there were 2,271 IPP prisoners serving time in England and Wales as of June 30; 856 were categorized as “unreleased” and 1,415 were “recalled.”
Nonetheless, Edis said the court did not intend to suggest that appeals would be permitted in all cases leading to IPP sentences.
Jephcott described the miscarriage of justice that occurred in the Haycock case as a “basic legal error,” per a statement published by the Gazette.
“The Crown court which imposed the sentence did not have the legal power to impose an IPP at all. Yet the sentence had remained in place for almost 20 years. It is troubling that at no point during Mr Haycock’s sentence, either the Ministry of Justice or Parole Board noted this basic error. Mr Haycock’s case was reviewed a dozen times, at times by senior judges of the Parole Board, and none of them noticed this problem,” Jephcott said in the statement, which was made after the Court of Appeal’s decision was issued.
Haycock said that after the IPP sentence was handed down 20 years ago, he was told by his barrister that he did not have grounds to appeal.
“I was shocked when Baxter Jephcott told me that the IPP had been imposed unlawfully. I deeply regret what I did and the harm I caused. I have never sought to excuse my offending. But I did not deserve to spend 20 years of my life behind bars, and I am glad the Court of Appeal has recognised this today in this important judgment,” Haycock said in a statement published by the Gazette.
