The defendant was represented by Stella Harris of the Garden Court Crime Team, instructed by Aika Stephenson of Just for Kids Law.
Stella recently represented a young woman, A, aged 21 and of positive good character, who accepted on a strict liability basis that she was in possession of a firearm and many hundreds of rounds of ammunition, which were found by police during a search of her bedroom.
The items had been put there by her then-partner and although, in her basis of plea, she accepted that she was aware that they related to criminality, she did not know what she had or how dangerous the items were.
Stella and her solicitor, Aika Stephenson, Director of Just for Kids Law, obtained psychological and psychiatric assessments of A, relating to her low IQ, her high degree of suggestibility and compliance and highly anxious state during this period.
They argued, on A’s behalf, that this relationship when analysed properly against established criteria, was coercive and controlling, based upon her self-reported account, an account taken from her mother, and telephone messages exchanged between them.
The sentencing judge accepted this was a controlling and coercive relationship and that, this feature, along with A’s significant mitigation and the unusual circumstances of her lack of knowledge of the items she possessed, meant that there were exceptional circumstances about the offence and A, which allowed him to impose a sentence below the mandatory minimum term of five years, of 18 months. This meant that A was immediately released.
