Court of Appeal hears Attorney General’s case for jailing Calocane
KILLER Valdo Calocane should be imprisoned for life, the Court of Appeal has heard.
Calocane, 32, stabbed three people to death and tried to kill three others with a van in Nottingham on June 13 last year.
Paranoid schizophrenic Calocane was sentenced for the killings of students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’malley-kumar, both 19, and school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, on January 25 at Nottingham Crown Court after admitting manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
Attorney General Victoria Prentis, the government’s chief legal adviser, concluded Calocane’s previous sentence of an indefinite hospital order was “unduly lenient” in February.
Yesterday, three appeal judges heard arguments from legal teams representing the Attorney General and Calocane’s barrister at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
Deanna Heer KC, representing the Attorney General’s Office, asked judges to consider whether imprisonment was needed, while Calocane’s defence counsel, Peter Joyce KC, stated this would effectively be further punishing him for being severely mentally ill.
Ms Heer said: “The harm caused and risk of harm to the public is extreme. Therefore the court is invited to consider whether a penal element was required and whether the sentencing judge erred.”
Ms Heer said a “penal element” was needed due to the severity of Calocane’s crimes. The sentencing judge, Mr Justice Turner, had opted against imposed a hybrid order earlier this year which would have would have seen Calocane treated in hospital before serving time in jail.
Ms Heer questioned whether there was a sound reason for departing from the “usual case” of a sentence with an imprisonment, adding: “His culpability was not extinguished by his mental impairment. He knew what he was doing.”
However, Mr Joyce, defending Calocane, said: “Any planning took place under the influence of the psychosis. In this particular case, this particular man had suffered from paranoid schizophrenia from 2019, it was formally diagnosed in 2020.
“This was a man that, until he was stricken by this dreadful condition, was a hardworking man who had put himself through university.
“If not for this condition he would not have committed any of these offences.
“He is to be punished for being mentally ill, and that is wrong.”
Calocane appeared in the courtroom via video link, prompting some relatives of his victims to turn in their courtroom seats to look at his expressionless face.
Dressed in a dark blue jacket and a brown hoodie, he raised his hand to confirm his identity to the court but was otherwise largely motionless.
The Lady Chief Justice, Baroness Carr, said the judgement of the three appeal judges would be reserved until a later date.
“We recognise how distressing this case if for all concerned,” Baroness Carr said, before adding that she hoped the court’s judgement would be handed down within seven days.