R v Ozgur Suyolcu [2026] EWCA Crim 1001
[1]On 31 March 2025 in the Crown Court at Maidstone, shortly before he was due to face trial, the appellant pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with intent and controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate family relationship. The pleas were entered after an unsuccessful application by the appellant to dismiss a count of attempted murder to which the section 18 offence was an alternative. That count remains on the file. There was a written basis of plea, which was not entirely accepted by the prosecution, but no Newton hearing took place because the matters in issue would not have materially affected the sentence.[2]On 13 June 2025, the appellant was sentenced by Mr Justice Murray to life imprisonment on the section 18 offence, which he took as the lead offence. In fixing the minimum term, the judge took a notional determinate sentence of 23 years and reduced it to 19 years and 6 months by applying a 15% discount for the guilty plea, which led to a minimum term of 13 years before taking account of time already spent on remand. The resultant minimum term was 11 years and 306 days. The judge imposed a concurrent sentence of 4 years and 3 months' imprisonment in respect of the count of controlling or coercive behaviour, after affording the same discount for the guilty plea.[3]The appellant appeals against that sentence by leave of the single judge.[4]Whilst it is rightly conceded that the judge was entitled to find the appellant dangerous, it is submitted by Mr Hussain that an extended determinate sentence or a determinate sentence would have adequately addressed the question of public protection; alternatively, the notional determinate sentence of both counts was manifestly excessive. Mr Hussain concentrated his oral submissions today on the submission that the starting point adopted by the judge was not only substantially outside the sentencing guidelines but was manifestly excessive and in the region of the type of sentence that might well have been passed on the appellant had he been found guilty of attempted murder.[5]The complainant, Harriet Betts, was the appellant's former partner. She is an insulin-dependent diabetic. They began a relationship in around September 2022, and he moved in to live with her in her flat. Ms Betts was then working in a café that belonged to her parents. Although the relationship was initially good, matters started to deteriorate after January 2023 when the appellant received a short custodial sentence for dangerous driving. During the period when he was in prison, the appellant frequently rang Ms Betts during the day, and she would have to leave her work to speak to him. The café manager noticed that when she did so, she would activate the milk steamer to make a noise to prove that she was at work. After the appellant was released from custody in June 2023 this behaviour escalated. He would ring Ms Betts at work sometimes seven or eight times a day and each call lasted for a long time. This led to tensions with her parents.[6]The appellant became increasingly jealous, controlling and violent. On one occasion he was seen by a member of the public to be abusing Ms Betts in the street and spitting in her face. Neighbours heard the sounds of regular arguments coming from Ms Betts's flat, with banging, a male voice shouting and a female crying.[7]In August 2023, in the course of an argument, the appellant punched Ms Betts in the face, knocking her to the floor. The punch caused an injury which she photographed. It required her to attend hospital and have stitches, but she lied to the medical staff and to her family and friends about how it had been caused, pretending that she had fallen over.[8]The police were suspicious and tried to investigate. They came to the café to speak to Ms Betts privately. The officers who attended noted that she was very distressed when they asked her about her relationship with the appellant. She avoided eye contact and was shaking, but she told them the relationship was good. The appellant was arrested and although he was not charged with that assault, he was recalled to prison for a short time. He sought to blame Ms Betts' mother for this.[9]Ms Betts became more and more disconnected from her family, to whom she had always been very close, because the appellant made it plain to her that he hated them and she felt it was easier to stay away. Over time her social media accounts were deleted and her telephone numbers were changed, and in due course her family had no real way of contacting her.[10]Messages recovered by the police from Ms Betts's mobile phone showed the extent of the appellant's control over her. She was required to report to him every aspect of her life, including her insulin levels, and he would make demands that she be home at a certain time or call him at a certain time and tell her to swear on the life of her sister's baby that she would do these things. He sent her messages making it clear that he hated her mother.[11]The manager at the café, noting Ms Betts’s increasingly erratic behaviour, thought that she and the appellant were taking drugs together. He suspected Ms Betts might be taking money from the business to pay for them. As a result. she lost her job in the café by the end of 2023. She then took a job at a bakery, but that was short lived because the appellant did not like her working there. He put posts on social media saying that a member of staff working at the café was using drugs and that people should be aware of cocaine being put in their food. As a result, Ms Betts lost her job.[12]As time went on, the appellant's violence towards Ms Betts escalated. When he was angry, he would either beat her up or take it out on her property, such as snapping her insulin pens or deliberately damaging the blood sugar sensor that she wore on her arm. As Murray J observed, these were striking examples of his gratuitously cruel and degrading treatment of Ms Betts during that period.[13]The spate of extreme violence which led to the charge of causing grievous bodily harm was inflicted over a period of about two weeks from the end of March to mid-April 2024. Matters came to a head on 13 April 2024 when Ms Betts made a 999 call to the police but rang off saying that she had called in error. The appellant could be heard in the background.[14]A few hours later Ms Betts made another call to the police and told them that she had been beaten and that they needed to come but she did not have long. In her victim personal statement, she described the amount of pain she was in as "absolutely off the scale". She thought it was very possible that the appellant would assault her again and she was scared that she would not survive if he did.[15]Two officers attended Ms Betts's flat and found the appellant watching TV in the living room. He said he was going out shortly. He pretended that Ms Betts had been attacked outside because of problems with some drug dealers — a lie he subsequently sought to coerce her into supporting. He told them that she was "in a bad way" but denied that she needed an ambulance or any assistance.[16]One of the officers found Ms Betts in the bedroom lying on the bed. She told him that she could not move and that her ribs and jaw were hurting. She was pale, weak and gasping for breath. She had also wet herself. That was an on-going health issue because of her diabetes, but she had been unable to use the toilet or clean herself because she was immobile due to the injuries the appellant had inflicted upon her. She asked the officer to close the door and then said that the appellant had beaten and burned her. She had been on the bed for days and had tried to call ambulance earlier but he had caught her doing it. When the police started to ask more questions about how the injuries were caused, the complainant became very distressed. She tried to change her account and said that the appellant was not responsible. However, en route to the hospital she told the balance crew that she thought she was dying and said that it was the appellant who had injured her.[17]As demonstrated graphically by the body map images, Ms Betts was injured from head to toe, with almost no part of her body left unaffected. She had sustained significant fractures, including fractures to both sides of her lower jawbone, fractures to both her shoulder blades, a fractured breastbone, fractures to the middle and lower back, fractures to the bones of her right arm, and multiple rib fractures which had punctured both her lungs causing each of them to partially collapse. There was an abnormal presence of air within the soft tissues on the left side of the chest wall; she had an abnormally fast heart rate and reduced oxygen levels; and she was anaemic. She had also sustained significant burns: a large burn on her upper abdomen and four on her back and limbs, each similar and with a distinct patterning. There were also a number of bite marks on her body. A forensic pathologist expressed the view that there was a significant risk to Ms Betts's life and that the extent of the injuries she sustained were at the extreme of inflicted injury in a surviving individual. Due to the nature and severity of the injuries, Ms Betts was transferred to King's College Hospital in London for treatment and kept in hospital for five weeks.[18]The offending had a severe psychological impact upon her as well as causing her severe pain. She had to have surgery on her jaw and repeated surgery on her arm, which became infected after the first operation.[19]On 9 August 2024 she provided the police with a video-recorded account of what had happened to her. The appellant had repeatedly attacked her over a course of several days, initially by punching her with full force on the jaw, breaking it in two places and knocking her to the floor. On other occasions he had punched her to her body, and he had kicked her in her ribs with such force as to knock her to the floor. He had twice used a hammer to beat her on her legs, and on a different occasion he used a solid metal bicycle D-lock to beat her on the shoulders, ribs and back. The burns had been inflicted with a clothes-steaming device in the course of an argument when the complainant had come out of the shower and the appellant refused to let her pass him. After he burnt her stomach, she screamed in pain and turned around, at which point he used the steamer to burn her back and her legs. The series of assaults led to the situation where Ms Betts found she was unable to move from lying on the bed. She could not eat or speak properly. The appellant refused to call her an ambulance but occasionally brought her drinks.[20]The police searched the complainant's flat and found a hammer, a solid metal bicycle lock and a portable clothes steamer with a pattern that matched the burn marks on her body. The appellant was arrested and made a no comment interview.[21]Whilst he was on remand in custody for assaulting her, the appellant engineered matters so that he could speak to Ms Betts on the telephone. He told her that he loved her and wanted to resume contact with her. He used his mother as an intermediary. He would record voice notes on his mother's phone, which his mother would play to Ms Betts and she would respond. The messages sent during this period demonstrated that although the appellant was initially charming, before long he went back to his increasingly controlling and threatening ways. He tried to get Ms Betts to say that drug dealers had caused her injuries. He was abusive and threatening when he did not believe her account of where she had been and who she had been with.[22]The messaging continued on the prison telephone system. He gave a false contact name for the complainant, allowing him to access a number for her so that he would make direct contact from the prison estate. Ms Betts subsequently told the police that she felt that she had to engage in this contact because she feared what might happen when the appellant was released from prison. She also felt very conflicted towards him because she felt that the expressions of love that were made to her were genuine and she was uncertain how to react.[23]The whole period of indirect and direct messaging post-arrest was extremely traumatic for Ms Betts, who became confused about what to do and whether to engage with the police. When the police became aware of the further contact and investigated it, the appellant was again interviewed and again made no comment.[24]The appellant was 30 years old at the time of sentence. He had 13 convictions for 28 offences between 2011 and 2022, including offences of violence. His first conviction was for two robberies committed with others at the age of 15. As an adult he had served two custodial sentences for assault occasioning actual bodily harm, the first of which had involved using a knuckle-duster to injure a previous female partner. He had been fined in 2017 for harassment and breach of a restraining order by seeking to contact the victim of that offence whilst he was in prison serving the sentence for that assault.[25]As Murray J said in his sentencing remarks, the pre-sentence report makes grim reading. It shows that the appellant had very limited insight into and understanding of the offending. He sought to minimise his conduct towards Ms Betts with a self-pitying focus on himself and a lack of empathy towards her. The author of that report commented on the risk of violence he posed to prison staff and other inmates and to members of his own family. It was her assessment that he poses an enduring and lifelong risk of causing serious harm to those with whom he entered an intimate relationship. The behaviour displayed was evidently entrenched. The judge took the view that the evidence fully justified that assessment.[26]In his basis of plea, the appellant said he was unaware of the full extent of Ms Betts's injuries since most of them were internal. The judge sentenced him on that basis, but as he said, as a matter of common sense the appellant must have been aware that she was in a very poor condition indeed, and the appellant knew what he had done to her.[27]Although there was a single section 18 count, this was charged as a course of conduct offence. There were multiple grave injuries inflicted over a sustained period on numerous different occasions in the course of two weeks, with the use of three different weapons, as well as punches, kicks and bites. Significant force must have been used. Each of those distinct assaults would have justified a significant sentence for causing at least actual bodily harm. Moreover, it would have been obvious to this appellant that his victim was getting weaker as he continued to inflict further injuries upon her.[28]Murray J's sentencing remarks are a model of clarity. The judge explained that he was going to reflect the overall criminality of the appellant's behaviour in the sentence passed on the section 18 count, with a concurrent sentence for the other offence to reflect totality. He also made it plain that he was going to sentence him on the basis only of the matters of which there was evidence before him rather than on the basis of anything referred to in the pre-sentence report for which the appellant had not been charged or convicted. At the outset he described the matter, with justification, as one of the worst cases of extreme domestic violence not involving the death of a victim that the court had seen.[29]The judge rightly identified that this was category 1 for harm because particularly grave or life-threatening injuries were caused, and high culpability. He identified two high culpability factors: the vulnerability of Ms Betts and the prolonged and persistent nature of the assaults. He also said that even if the hammer, bicycle lock and steam iron were not strictly speaking a 'highly dangerous weapon' within the meaning of the guideline, the appellant's use of various weapons on multiple occasions reinforced the high culpability of his offending.[30]The starting point in the sentencing guideline was 12 years' custody, but a substantial upward adjustment was required, taking this outside the category range to at least 18 years' custody before considering the aggravating factors.[31]That approach was entirely in accordance with the guidelines, which indicate that a combination of high culpability factors may attract a sentence beyond the category range.[32]When giving leave to appeal, the single judge said that the judge was fully justified in passing a sentence which reflected a notional term in excess of the category A1 range, and we agree. In fairness, Mr Hussain, who appeared on behalf of the appellant as he did in the court below, did not seriously seek to argue otherwise.The judge then identified seven aggravating factors, namely:
[33]• the appellant's previous convictions including for violence against another domestic partner;• the domestic context of the assaults on Ms Betts;• the history of prior violence towards her including the injury caused by the earlier punch;• his failure to obtain assistance;• the fact that the course of offending occurred whilst the appellant was on licence; and• his repeated victimisation and manipulation of Ms Betts whilst he was in custody on remand.[34]The judge made it clear that he had taken care to avoid double counting for factors that overlapped. He found, and we concur, that there was precious little mitigation, with no proper evidence of remorse. The judge was entitled to express scepticism about the appellant's expressions of shame.[35]Bearing in mind that the sentence had to reflect the criminality of the coercive control offences as well as the section 18 offending, the judge concluded that the notional sentence after trial would have been one of 23 years' imprisonment.[36]The real issue on this appeal, as the single judge identified when giving leave, is whether Murray J was justified in elevating the notional sentence to a figure which was twice the starting point in the guidelines or whether that was manifestly excessive. Mr Hussain submitted that it was manifestly excessive. He accepted that a significant upward shift was required, but he submitted that the level of sentencing was something that would have been more apposite had his client been convicted of the attempted murder count. His client had been in custody now for 2 years and 3 months, and Mr Hussain pointed out that he had not got into any further trouble since.[37]The court was shown a letter which was dictated by the appellant in which he has expressed considerable shame for what he did, acknowledged the seriousness of this offence, and has sought to provide an explanation of sorts for his offending. He says that his mental state had deteriorated because the driving offence of which he was convicted caused him to lose his driving licence and therefore his job as a delivery driver. He felt that he did not have the emotional tools or maturity to cope with what he described as seeing his partner harm herself, and he has referred to the fact that since he has been in prison he has completed a number of courses including drug rehabilitation programmes, and he has struggled to deal with the causes of his behaviour and has signed up for courses in which to address it. He says that he is trying to better himself and prepare for a future where he can contribute positively to society.[38]All of that is extremely commendable and it is good to know that the appellant is doing well in prison. However, the position as far as the sentencing judge was concerned was that at that stage there was no sign of any realisation of the magnitude of the offending, nor indeed any proper sign of remorse. The court enquired of Mr Hussain today whether he wished to rely upon any evidence that was before the sentencing judge which in Mr Hussain's submission would have enabled the judge to reach the conclusion that there was a realistic prospect of the appellant becoming rehabilitated within a finite time period such that the judge could have imposed an extended determinate sentence. But there was nothing that we could find in the papers that pointed in that direction and Mr Hussain very fairly said that there was nothing that he wished to draw our attention to which would have justified that.[39]The judge dealt with the coercive control offending immediately after he had fixed the notional sentence for the section 18 offence. He identified that this was a higher culpability offence and category 1 for harm. He identified multiple higher culpability and harm factors. He took the starting point in the guideline of 2 years and 6 months, but because of the multiple higher culpability factors he identified, he elevated that to the top of the range of 4 years before considering the aggravating and mitigating factors. He concluded that the least sentence he could have passed after trial on that count had it stood alone would have been one of 5 years’ imprisonment. With the discount for plea, that was reduced to 4 years and 3 months. We find nothing wrong with the judge's approach in relation to that count, nor indeed with the sentence he imposed.[40]The judge then went on to consider the question of dangerousness. It is hardly surprising that in the light of the offending itself, coupled with the appellant's offending history, his volatile nature and the total lack of insight at that stage, the judge found that there was a significant risk of the appellant committing further specified offences and causing serious harm by doing so. He said that he was sure that this was a risk that was likely to carry on long into the future. That was why he was imposing a life sentence.[41]Given that, as we have said, there was nothing in the evidence before the judge to indicate any prospect that the appellant's behaviour could be adequately addressed by his attending courses or receiving assistance from probation even during an extended licence period, and no sign at that stage that he had any intention of seeking to mend his ways, we agree with the single judge that the sentencing judge was fully justified in concluding that only a life sentence would address the risk to the public that he had identified.[42]As for the length of sentence and the way in which the judge reached the minimum term, for offending of this seriousness, this court considers that there is no way that this sentence could be described as manifestly excessive. It reflected the full criminality involved over both counts. These were careful, well-considered sentencing remarks, and there is nothing in our view to suggest that the judge went wrong in any of the stages of the sentencing process.[43]For those reasons, we dismiss this appeal. Epiq Europe Ltd hereby certify that the above is an accurate and complete record of the proceedings or part thereof. Lower Ground Floor, 46 Chancery Lane, London, WC2A 1JE Tel No: 020 7404 1400 Email: Rcj@epiqglobal.co.uk