SENTENCING STATEMENTS

On sentencing Lord Arthurson made the following remarks in court:

"Craig Allan Murray, on 30 May 2025 the sheriff at Peterhead remitted the present indictment to this court for sentence.  On 28 April 2025 you had proceeded to trial before the remitting sheriff.  A plea was agreed during the evidence of the first Crown witness.  You pled guilty to a charge of assault to injury and robbery; a charge of theft; and a charge of attempted extortion by way of threats of setting fire to domestic property and of assault.  

A criminal justice social work report obtained thereafter indicated that you were assessed as requiring a maximum level of intervention to manage your risk.  The preparation of a risk of serious harm assessment was recommended by the author of that report.  On 20 June 2025 you appeared at Edinburgh High Court when a risk assessment order was pronounced in respect of you.  The case calls this morning for disposal.

You are presently aged 34.  You have a deplorable criminal record.  To date you have accrued 58 groups of previous convictions, eight being at indictment level, three of these for assault and robbery.  You have several weapons related‑ convictions, in respect of a sharp object, a metal pole and knives. You have been the subject of 13 previous custodial disposals.

The author of the risk assessment report concludes that you present with traits associated with antisocial personality disorder and borderline personality disorder.  She advises that you do not, however, present as psychopathic, and observes that this has positive implications for your long-term‑ future risk.  The assessor expresses the view that you most closely fit with a definition of high risk in terms of the RMA Guidelines.  She records, however, that this is not, as she puts matters, without some debate, particularly regarding the potential impact which treatment could have on your amenability to change if such treatment work was intense and multi‑modal and if you could maintain motivation to engage with that.  You would, the assessor states, require a sufficiently long sentence in which to achieve this, along with a lengthy extension period.  In such circumstances, measures short of lifelong restriction could arguably be sufficient in your case.  The author reports your increasing reflectiveness as her interviews with you progressed.  Your clear personality difficulties as these manifest themselves could, the author concludes, abate with time.  These points align, it is considered, more closely with medium risk.

I have listened with care to the submissions advanced this morning in mitigation by your extremely experienced senior counsel, and I take into account particularly all that has been said by him regarding consideration by the court of an extended sentence as a disposal which could offer the prospect of a combination of punishment, public protection and rehabilitation.

The two principal sentencing issues in this case can be stated as follows:  first, whether the risk criteria expressed in section 210E of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 have been established, and, second, whether you can be properly located within that cohort of exceptional offenders for whom an order for lifelong restriction is the appropriate disposal.  The author of the risk assessment report has concluded that you present with an enduring propensity to seriously endanger the lives or well‑being of the public at large.  That said, she is noteably nuanced in her analysis of and approach to the appropriate level of risk, recording features of your case which most closely align with high and with medium risk respectively.

In your criminal record it is of note that you have not previously been made the subject of an extended sentence.  You clearly have problematic and pervasive characteristics which are relevant to risk and which need to change significantly, otherwise you will continue to pose a risk of serious harm to the public.  Risk management proposals lie at the heart of the assessor’s report.  It is crystal clear that if you are not to be made the subject of lifelong restriction, any extended sentence imposed would have to be a very high tariff disposal, with the necessary inclusion of an extension period component tending towards the maximum available period.

You are a young man.  I am concerned that your personality is such that the imposition today of an order for lifelong restriction may simply be setting you up to fail in respect of the very onerous standards required to justify a future release decision by those charged with assessing your future risk.  Perhaps I might be permitted to speak candidly.  While it may be considered glib to express this view, experience tells us that if one goes looking for risk, one will inevitably find it, and in your case I am, having regard to my own professional experience of such matters, deeply troubled by the prospect of imprisoning you without hope in a closed risk assessment tunnel which could last, literally, a lifetime.  Your index offending in the present case was of considerable gravity, but it was indicted in the sheriff court and only comes before this court by virtue of a remit procedure.  Issues of proportionality accordingly arise in respect of the potential disposals to be contemplated by the court in this case in the context of the index offending itself. The risk assessor detects what I have determined to be hopeful signs for your future risk management, and I note here your maturing and increasingly reflective conduct and comments during the lengthy interview assessment process.

On balance, and after considerable reflection myself, I have concluded that the appropriate disposal in your case is an extended sentence.  I simply cannot place you within the cohort of exceptional offenders for whom an order for lifelong restriction is the only proper disposal. That said, I have no doubt whatsoever, on the basis of the whole risk assessment material now available, that the normal period of licence would not be adequate to protect the public from serious harm from you when you are released in due course.  

The extended sentence which I am accordingly imposing today will be in two parts, namely, first, a custodial part and then, second, a lengthy extension period when you will be under supervision while on licence in the community.  The conditions of your licence will be set by Scottish Ministers.  If during this licence period you fail to comply with your licence conditions, which in your case will require, I cannot emphasise enough, to be the subject of highly rigorous management and monitoring, your licence may be revoked and you will almost certainly be returned to custody for a further period in respect of the present indictment.  The court also has the power to deal with you if you commit a further offence after you are released from the custodial part of this sentence and while you are on licence and under supervision.

In the whole circumstances, I now sentence you therefore as follows.  On charges 1 and 4 of this remitted indictment, on an in cumulo basis, you will serve an extended sentence of 16 years duration.  The custodial part will comprise a period of 7 years imprisonment.  The timing of your plea during the Crown evidence at your trial attracts no discount to that period.  The extension period will be one of 9 years.  This sentence is backdated to the date of your initial remand into custody in these proceedings, namely to  23 May 2024.  For completeness, you are admonished and dismissed on charge 3.

Finally, on unopposed Crown motion, the court now makes non-‑harassment orders in the detailed terms sought by the Crown and recorded in the court minutes in respect of the two individuals referred to in those minutes.  You will not approach or contact either of them, directly or indirectly, in any way whatsoever, all for an indefinite period. There are additional provisions in relation to approaching a particular address contained within these orders.