Court of Appeal Grants Reduced Sentence Terrorism Teenager Autism Spectrum Disorder
Mr Amer Ahmad of JD Spicer Zeb, one of our senior experienced solicitors, was recently instructed by a client in relation to his conviction of sharing terrorist documents and materials online, including the manufacture of explosives and improvised firearms. Our client was found guilty of setting up a library of more than one hundred documents containing terrorist manifestos of which he had distributed more than one hundred.
Our client’s autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was not known at the time of his trial where he was convicted by a jury at Wiltshire Crown Court and was found to be dangerous. Our client was sentenced with an extended sentence of seven years including an extended license period.
When first sentenced, the Judge was reluctant to take our client’s young age into consideration as he was of the opinion that our client had presented themselves as ‘cold’, and had not shown any ‘emotional vulnerability’ or remorse when giving evidence on the stand.
Post conviction, our client was diagnosed with ASD, and Mr Amer Ahmad worked extensively to obtain fresh evidence from two experts which directly addressed the impact of our client’s ASD on his culpability and overall presentation at trial.
Mr Amer Ahmad instructed defence counsel, both Edward Fitzgerald KC and Rabah Kherbane of Doughty Street Chambers, to represent our client at the Court of Appeal. Defence counsel submitted that our client’s ASD explained some aspects of his offending, such as the way he organised documents, replicated certain behaviours, and justified his presentation at trial. It was explained that our client’s ASD meant that he came across as disengaged, distant and cold, and that others’ appreciation of his capacity to be remorseful and caring was limited. Defence counsel argued that in the absence of the Judge’s misinterpretation of our client’s ASD, there was no further reasonable basis to find that our client posed a significant risk of serious harm to members of the public at the time of his first sentence.
The Court of Appeal overturned the Judge’s previous finding of dangerousness, ruling that the Judge had incorrectly regarded our client’s inability to express emotion as being ‘cold’ and had not given appropriate weight to our client’s specific neurological deficits that come with his ASD.
The Court of Appeal reduced our client’s sentence to five years imprisonment.