The families of the Nottingham attack victims have criticised the “utterly flawed and under-resourced criminal justice system” after the court of appeal rejected an application to increase Valdo Calocane’s sentence to include jail time.
Calocane, 32, was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order in January after pleading guilty to three counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to paranoid schizophrenia, and three counts of attempted murder.
He killed the university students Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, both 19, and Ian Coates, a 65-year-old school caretaker, and ran over three other people in a spate of violence in the East Midlands city last June.
Calocane’s sentence was deemed unduly lenient by the attorney general, who referred it to the court of appeal in February, where lawyers argued Calocane should be given a hybrid order, under which he would be sent to prison if deemed fit enough to be discharged from hospital.
Deanna Heer KC, representing the attorney general’s office, said the “exceptional level of seriousness” of Calocane’s crimes required a sentence with a “penal element, an element of punishment”.
But in a ruling handed down on Tuesday, the lady chief justice, Sue Carr, said: “There was no error in the approach adopted by the judge. The sentences imposed were not arguably unduly lenient.”
She said Calocane was “in the grip of a severe psychotic episode” when the attacks took place, and “schizophrenia was the sole identified cause of these crimes”.
“[The judge] reached the reasonable conclusion based on the psychiatric evidence before him, that the aim of public protection would better be served by hospital with restrictions orders,” the ruling stated.
After the court’s decision, Emma Webber, Barnaby’s mother, said it had come as “no surprise” to the victims’ families.
“Today’s outcome proves how utterly flawed and under-resourced the criminal justice system in the UK is. It also illustrates the need for urgent reforms in the UK homicide law,” she said.
“The families now face their own life sentence of ensuring the monster that is Valdo Calocane becomes the next Ian Brady or Fred West and is never released.”
She added there “should be an element of punishment for such a heinous act, alongside appropriate treatment” and the families would continue pushing for a public inquiry into the case.
Calocane appeared via video link from hospital. He sat impassively as the judges handed down their judgment during the brief hearing on Tuesday morning; apparently unable to hear the proceedings. The judges proceeded on Tuesday with the consent of his counsel.
Carr told the court Calocane did not appear to have had mental health problems until 2019, and there was no motive for his random attacks.
She said: “The psychiatric experts agreed that the offender was suffering from treatment-resistant paranoid schizophrenia. His symptoms included persecutory delusional beliefs, hallucinations, thought alienation and disturbed behaviour.
“The experts agreed that, had he not been experiencing symptoms of acute psychosis, he would not have perpetrated the acts. All the medical experts agreed that a hospital order with restrictions was appropriate.”
She added that “the extreme violence perpetrated by the offender makes it very likely that whichever of the two options had been adopted, the offender will spend the rest of his life in a secure hospital”.
Calocane fatally stabbed Webber and O’Malley-Kumar as they walked home from a night out in the early hours of 13 June last year, before killing Coates as he was driving to work and stealing his van.
He used the vehicle to drive into three pedestrians: Wayne Birkett, Marcin Gawronski and Sharon Miller, who all suffered serious injuries, before being arrested by police.
Speaking outside the Royal Courts of Justice after the decision, Sanjoy Kumar, O’Malley-Kumar’s father said the ruling was “disappointing, but not unexpected”.
“Multiple missed opportunities to prevent the Nottingham attacks and the murder of our children and Ian Coates is what has led us here today,” he said. “We have continued to pursue agencies that failed us and hold them responsible for the Nottingham attacks so that no other family is made to suffer like ours.”
