Amazon courier who stabbed traffic warden has sentence more than doubled after Crown appeal

About this case:

• Citation:
  [2025] HCJAC 38
• Judgment:
  External link
• Court:
  Appeal Court of the High Court of Justiciary
• Judge:
  Lord Pentland

Respondent Eamonn Gallagher pled guilty to a single charge of assault to severe injury to the danger of life and was given a sentence of two years’ imprisonment, reduced to 16 months by his plea. It was argued by the Crown that the sentence imposed failed to fully consider the harm caused to the complainer and that the level of discount was too high.

The appeal was heard by the Lord Justice General, Lord Pentland, with Lord Doherty and Lord Clark. Keenan KC appeared for the Crown and O’Keefe, advocate, for the respondent.

Would have died

On the afternoon of 15 April 2024, the complainer was working as a traffic warden in Gorgie Road, Edinburgh. He was in the process of placing a parking ticket on the windscreen of the respondent’s car. The respondent approached the complainer in an aggressive manner, and a verbal altercation ensued, after which he drove to a nearby street and returned on foot carrying a knife.

A witness saw the entirety of the assault, in which the complainer suffered a 1cm stab wound to his abdomen with penetration of the abdominal wall. He required surgery in order to resect his small bowel and would have died if not for the prompt medical attention he received. Following his discharge from hospital, the complainer’s wound became infected and nearly became septic. As a result of his injuries, he required to take an office-based role with a reduced salary following a three-month absence from work.

At the sentencing diet it was pled in mitigation that the respondent had no recent or analogous previous convictions and that at the time of the offence he was being medicated for depression and anxiety. In assessing the level of harm caused to the complainer, the sheriff explained that she did not consider the second hospital admission following the wound infection to be causally linked to the incident.

For the Crown it was submitted that this was not an offence committed in the spur of the moment, as the respondent had driven away from the locus before returning with the knife. The sheriff had attached too much weight to the respondent’s personal mitigating factors, and her errors were compounded by an excessive discount. The case of Stoddard v HMA (unreported, 2021), which involved a less serious injury than the present case that had not required hospital treatment, had resulted in a two-year headline sentence.

Sufficiently serious view

Delivering the opinion of the court, Lord Pentland began: “We are satisfied that the sentence imposed by the sheriff was unduly lenient and that it is in the interests of justice for this court to interfere with it. We consider that the sheriff has underestimated the respondent’s culpability and the nature and extent of the harm he caused to the complainer. We are also persuaded that the sheriff allowed too great a discount from the headline sentence she selected.”

He explained further: “In the present case the offence was significantly aggravated by a number of factors: it was committed in a public place; the complainer was a public official engaged in the enforcement of parking restrictions; the attack was not entirely impulsive – the respondent had time to cool down, having returned to his car after the initial altercation and then moved and parked the car in a nearby street; the respondent fled the scene and did nothing to assist the complainer. We consider that when the cumulative effect of these considerations is taken into account it is clear that the sheriff has not taken a sufficiently serious view of the nature of the attack and the level of the respondent’s culpability.”

Considering the sheriff’s other errors, Lord Pentland said: “Contrary to what she says in her report to this court, it is clear that the infection of the complainer’s wound and his readmission to hospital were directly caused by the attack. The complainer explained this in his victim statement and the matter was referred to in the Crown narrative. The infection and the treatment it required led to significant difficulties for the complainer and to extensive further medical intervention. He has been left with substantial physical and psychological difficulties. He has suffered continuing financial loss.”

He concluded: “We conclude that the sentence of 16 months’ imprisonment imposed by the sheriff fell outside the range of sentences which, taking account of all the relevant factors, could reasonably be considered appropriate. The present case is somewhat less serious than that of Brough v HMA (unreported, 2021) where the appellant had a serious criminal record; the injury involved a major organ and there was sepsis. It is significantly more serious than that of Stoddard, where the knife was much smaller, the injury was relatively minor, and no hospital treatment was necessary. In the whole circumstances this is a case where the sentence ought to have been close to the maximum sentence which the sheriff could impose.”

The court therefore allowed the appeal, quashed the sentence imposed by the sheriff, and substituted it for one of 4 years and 6 months’ imprisonment, discounted by 25% from 6 years.