SENTENCING STATEMENTS

On sentencing, Lord Arthurson made the following comments:

“Ian Sinclair McIntyre, on 25 June 2025, at Edinburgh High Court, you pled guilty to a section 76 indictment libelling the following three charges, all arising from your criminal conduct on 20 December 2024 at a residential property at Auchmacoy, Aberdeenshire: first, the statutory breach of a non-harassment order; second, the crime of assault to ‑danger of life, while on bail and also with a statutory domestic abuse aggravation, all in respect of your ex-partner;  and, third, the crime of assault while on bail in respect of two police officers.

A detailed narrative was read into the record on the date of your first appearance on this indictment.  In the early hours of 20 December 2024 you were at your ex-partner's address. You had taken alcohol.  In the living room you sprayed the complainer from head to toe with lighter fluid.  You told her that you wanted to set her alight.  You bent down and began to spark a lighter towards her leg.  This caused your victim to back into the corner of the room as you continued to shout and swear at her and threaten to set her on fire.  You called the police, stating “Good luck in getting here in time”, “I’ve done it” and telling your victim that “You f***ed this by calling the police”.  During your call to the police, which lasted 15 minutes, you stated “If anyone turns up here the whole house is going up” and “I’ve nothing to lose”.  

The complainer managed to run out of the house. Police found her hiding behind her car in a distressed state.  

You proceeded to spray lighter fuel at one officer and attempted to spray another officer with the fuel.  Firearms officers attended and safely removed you from your victim’s upstairs bedroom.  Later you stated to officers that you had gone berserk and had thought that you would set the house ablaze.

You are aged 40.  You have accrued to date 19 groups of previous convictions.  In particular, you have an extensive record in respect of domestically aggravated offending.  Indeed, the index offending represents your fourth conviction on indictment for such offending, the most recent of these, in January 2024, involving a knife.  You have repeatedly breached court orders and offended whilst on bail.  Since your remand in this case on 23 December 2024, you have been the subject of two separate custodial sentences, one in respect of the complainer in the present case.  You have additionally in the past been the subject of police call outs related to threats of harm involving a knife against two different partners.

The offending in this case was committed by you while you were on bail, two community payback orders, and deferred sentence.  There is no doubt that your offending against women is increasing in frequency and severity. In my view the sentence selected today must mark a watershed in the approach of the courts to disposal in respect of serious and escalating domestic offending by you.  

In the initial criminal justice social work report and risk assessment you were assessed as presenting a serious risk of harm to any future intimate partners, and assessment under the SARA V3 risk assessment tool suggested that there is a very high likelihood that you may re-offend in a domestic context.

At the last calling of this case on 7 August 2025, such was my level of concern about your increasing level of risk to the public that the court made a risk assessment order. A comprehensive report from an accredited RMA risk assessor is now available. The assessor advises that it is likely that for you to make sustained change in your life, restrictions will require to be placed upon you for a significant period. The key characteristics underpinning your risk relate primarily to your problems with emotional regulation, impulsivity, anger, a callous disregard for the rights of others, self-entitlement and entrenched derogatory attitudes towards females. You present with impairments in all aspects of your psychological functioning. Your future risk management will require, the author advises, to be robust and intensive.

I have listened with care to the submissions in mitigation which have been advanced by your counsel on your behalf both at the hearing on 7 August 2025 and also this morning. I have also considered a letter from your mother and a letter of apology from yourself in respect of the complainer and the police officers involved in this case. I note in particular what was submitted by your counsel last August regarding the accidents at work which had caused you to self-medicate by way of alcohol; your recognition that you have a problem with self-control and relationship management; and the submission made by your counsel that you require to attend the Caledonian Programme and that an extended sentence was the appropriate disposal in your case. Today your counsel has renewed these submissions, having regard to the terms of the whole material now available. He has further submitted that you have cooperated with the prison authorities while in custody and that you have recognised the need to change and to address your issues with women and with alcohol. He has also provided supplementary information about the background to your offending in this case.

The real issue for the court today is whether to pronounce an order for lifelong restriction in this case or to impose upon you a very high tariff extended sentence, all against a background in which the only protective factor identified by the original risk assessor was that you are presently in custody.  This is accordingly a borderline decision.  The question for the court to ask and seek to answer on all of the relevant information before it becomes this: can you properly be located within that cohort of exceptional offenders for whom an order for lifelong restriction is the only appropriate disposal?

On balance, and with some reluctance, I have determined not to impose an OLR on this occasion, for the following reasons: first, you have not previously been made the subject of an extended sentence, let alone the robust and high tariff one which I will be imposing upon you today, and, second, that in assessing you as medium risk the RMA risk assessor has reported that you have presented with some capacity and willingness to engage, and she has recommended that measures less than lifelong restriction should be considered in your case in order to manage the serious and harmful level of risk which is assessed to be posed by you to the public at large.

Turning now to disposal, it is clear that the nature and gravity of your offending in the present case requires the imposition of an immediate and very substantial custodial sentence.  On the basis of the whole available risk-related material, and having regard to your criminal history and of course to the nature of your offending in this matter, it is further clear that the normal period of licence would not be adequate to protect the public from serious harm from you when you are in due course released.  

I propose accordingly to impose upon you today an extended sentence. This sentence will be in two parts.  The first part will be custodial.  The second part will take the form of an extension period when you will be under supervision while on licence and in the community.  The conditions of your licence will be fixed by Scottish Ministers.  If you fail to comply with these licence conditions during the extension period your licence will be revoked and you may be returned to custody for a further period in respect of this indictment.  The court also has the power to deal with you if you commit a further offence after your release from the custodial part of this sentence and while you are on licence and under supervision.

You subjected your victim in this case to an appalling ordeal. You had on one view of events commenced the process of setting her on fire. Having considered the facts of this case carefully, as I am entitled and indeed require to do, I infer in the whole circumstances that your intention was indeed to set her on fire. In the event, you compounded matters by assaulting two police officers in the manner already described.  In addition, you have a dreadful record of directly relevant and plainly escalating offending.

I now sentence you as follows.  On charge one you will be admonished and dismissed.  That charge provides some of the context, however, for the principal charges which bring this case to the High Court, namely charges two and three. On those charges, on an in cumulo basis, you will serve an extended sentence of 15 years duration, with a custodial part of 9 years and an extension period of 6 years.  But for the timing and utility of your early plea, the notional headline custodial part of this disposal would have been 12 years.  I attribute 6 months of the headline custodial part of the in cumulo extended sentence to the bail aggravation libelled in charge two, and I further attribute 1 year of the headline custodial part of that extended sentence to the statutory domestic abuse aggravation libelled therein. For completeness, had I been sentencing you separately by way of determinate custodial sentences on charges two and three, you would have received headline periods of 10 years and 3 years and 6 months respectively, with 6 months attributed in respect of the bail aggravation on each charge. Having regard to the application of the important sentencing consideration of totality, however, I have reduced the global in cumulo notional headline custodial part to the said period of 12 years.

You have been remanded in custody in these proceedings since 23 December 2024, but that remand period has of course been interrupted by the imposition of two custodial sheriff court sentences in January and February 2025 respectively.  On the motion of your counsel, unopposed by the senior advocate depute for the Crown, I now backdate the sentence imposed today to 1 January 2026.

Finally, on unopposed Crown motion, the court additionally makes a non-harassment order in respect of the complainer named in charge two. You will not in any circumstances approach or contact her, nor will you attempt to do so, directly or indirectly and in any way whatsoever, all for an indefinite period.”

24 March 2026