R v Ahmed [2013] EWCA Crim 1393, [2013] MHLO 66

Appellant unsuccessfully sought restricted hospital order in place of an IPP sentence.

MHLR

The summary below has been supplied by Kris Gledhill, Editor of the Mental Health Law Reports. The full report can be purchased from Southside Online Publishing (if there is a "file not found" error, it means this particular report is not yet available online). More similar case summaries from the year 2014 are available here: MHLR 2014.

Whether a sentence of detention for public protection should be replaced with hospital and restriction orders under ss37/41 Mental Health Act 1983 in light of further medical evidence - R v Mohammed Mokshud Ahmed – [2014] MHLR 58

Points Arising: An application to challenge a custodial sentence on the basis that a hospital disposal should have been put in place rests on showing that the criteria for such a disposal were present at the time of sentence.

Facts and Outcome: MMA admitted stabbing a stranger in the street; there was dispute as to whether he had a mental illness as well as a personality disorder, and the judge imposed a sentence of detention for public protection in light of the dangerousness of MMA. As a result of transfers to hospital during his sentence, 2 psychiatrists formed the view that he had paranoid schizophrenia and had at the timoe of the offence, but another psychiatrist formed the view that he was malingering, though might have had a transient drug-induced psychosis at the time of the offence. The Court of Appeal an appeal, finding that MMA had not shown that he met the criteria for a hospital order at the time of sentence such that the opinions expressed to the sentencing judge were in error, and preferring the evidence that he was malingering; it was noted that if he had developed paranoid schizophrenia since the sentence was imposed, he could be transferred to hospital.

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