Saheed v R: Court of Appeal dismisses sentence challenge in two-line drugs conspiracy

The Court of Appeal has dismissed the appeal of Isaah Saheed against a sentence of eight years and three months' imprisonment imposed at Birmingham Crown Court following guilty pleas to three counts of being concerned in the supply of class A drugs across two separate drugs lines.

Saheed, aged 21 at the time of the offending, occupied the role of "captain" on both lines. The "F line" operated between January and June 2023, supplying crack cocaine and heroin across the West Midlands; the "Oscar line", which he established and ran concurrently from March 2023, distributed powdered cocaine. Below him sat lieutenants, baggers and drivers, with Mudassar Khan acting as wholesale supplier above him.

Following contested Newton hearings, HHJ Henderson sentenced Saheed on the basis that his combined offending involved approximately one kilogramme of class A drugs per month over six months — placing the case firmly within category 1 of the relevant sentencing guideline. An 11-year sentence before reduction for plea was reduced by one quarter, yielding the term under appeal.

Four grounds were advanced by counsel for the appellant. The principal complaints were that the judge had wrongly sentenced the F line as though it involved six kilogrammes, when experts had agreed it involved no more than two and a half; that the Oscar line had been over-estimated in quantity, with the prosecution's own expert accepting that no more than 270 grammes could be positively attributed to that line during the indictment period; that the sentence was disproportionate when compared to that of Mudassar Khan (six years nine months after plea); and that insufficient weight had been given to the appellant's relative youth and absence of relevant convictions.

Delivering the judgement of the court, Mrs Justice Eady upheld the judge's approach in its entirety.

On the F line, the agreed figure of two and a half kilogrammes represented what the experts could positively attribute from messages — not the totality of the offending. The judge had been entitled to look at all the evidence before him in the round, rather than confining himself to expert opinion. Images recovered from the Oscar line handset depicted kilogramme blocks of cocaine and quarter-kilogramme quantities alongside street deal wraps, all falling within the relevant indictment period. Neither Saheed nor Khan gave evidence at the Newton hearing to explain that material.

The court was satisfied that the judge's conclusion — that Saheed had been dealing in approximately one kilogramme per month across the two lines — was "entirely understandable" and well supported by the evidence. The one-quarter reduction for plea did not signal any acceptance of the appellant's bases of plea; it reflected a pragmatic approach given the difficulty of disaggregating the F line plea (entered at the earliest opportunity) from the Oscar line plea (entered on the first day of trial after the Newton hearing).

On disparity, the comparison with Mudassar Khan was described as "misconceived". Khan's indictment was limited to a three-week period; sentencing him beyond it would have been unlawful. Any right-thinking member of the public, fully informed, would appreciate that. The comparisons with co-defendants Jibraan Ali and Ismail Rehman were equally inapt: both faced sentence in respect of one line only, neither had established a further drugs line in parallel, and neither had occupied the same level of seniority as Saheed.

The personal mitigation — youth, limited antecedents, family obligations and delay — had been expressly weighed by the sentencing judge and found to be heavily outweighed by the gravity and duration of the offending. The Court of Appeal, standing back to consider the overall effect of the sentence, reached the same view.

The case confirms that where a defendant simultaneously operates multiple drugs lines, a sentencing court may take a holistic, global approach to the entirety of the offending rather than treating each conspiracy as a wholly separate exercise, provided double-counting is guarded against. It also reinforces that an agreed expert attribution of drug weight does not set a ceiling on the court's factual findings; circumstantial and photographic evidence may properly support conclusions going beyond what formal expert analysis can positively identify.