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THE FACTS
The applicant, Mr Robert Malcolm Weeks, born in 1949, is a citizen of the United Kingdom and was at the time of his application to the Commission detained in HM Prison, Lewes, England. He is represented by Mr Peter Ashman, Barrister-at-law, who works for the organisation JUSTICE in the United Kingdom.
On 6 December 1966 the applicant, then aged 17, pleaded guilty at Hampshire Assizes to armed robbery, assaulting a police officer and being in the unlawful possession of a firearm. In respect of the first offence, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. For the second and third offences he received 2 and 3 years' imprisonment respectively, all sentences to run concurrently. The robbery had been committed with a starting pistol loaded with blank cartridges. He stole a sum of 35 pence which was later found on the shop floor.
At his trial, a prison medical officer testified that he could find no evidence of mental instability which would justify sending the applicant to a mental institution. However, a probation report characterised the applicant as being susceptible to fluctuation of mood, emotionally immature and of having a morbid interest in the literature of violence and a fascination for guns. It emerged that he had committed the robbery because he wanted to pay back £3 which he owed his mother.
The trial judge considered that an indeterminate life sentence would be the most humane punishment as it would enable the Home Secretary to release the applicant when he had matured sufficiently for it to be safe to do so. This view was upheld in a decision, dated 6 April 1967, of the Court of Appeal. Salmon L.J. said:
"Now at the trial it appears that the prison doctor said that there was no evidence of any mental disorder than apparent which would have justified his detention in a mental institution. The learned Judge, quite rightly in the view of this Court, took the view that this was not a case for borstal because borstal for one reason would not be a sufficiently secure place to send such a dangerous young man. The Judge was therefore since he could not send him to a mental institution for lack of evidence faced with a difficult decision on whether he should give him what he did, namely life imprisonment, or sentence him to some long teru, some definite term of imprisonment for a number of years. As he was at pains to point out, he in mercy really to the boy took the former course. Now life imprisonment in this case at any rate means an indeterminate sentence. If
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