Patrick Young v. Procurator Fiscal, Dumfries [2013] HCJAC 41

Criminal note of appeal against sentence:- On 24 April 2012 the appellant pled guilty at  a trial diet and sentence was deferred for the preparation of a social work report. In May 2012 the appellant was remanded in custody in England for new offences. On 8 November 2012, at an adjourned diet in Scotland, the appellant had already been sentenced in England for those new offences, receiving sentences of two years and nine months. The sheriff in Scotland, on 8 November 2012, imposed sentences of imprisonment that were to "run consecutively to any other sentence currently being served". Here on behalf of the appellant it was submitted that it was incompetent for the sheriff to make the sentence consecutive to the English sentence. On behalf of the Crown it was submitted that a court has a common law power to impose consecutive sentences of imprisonment in all circumstances where they are merited and there was no statutory provision which, either expressly, or by implication, fettered that common law power. Here the court considered whether the sheriff had a common law power to make the sentences imposed by him consecutive to the English sentences previously imposed.