Despite a horrible death, common law still peers past the wreckage and into the driver’s mind, hunting for intention long after the consequences have made themselves brutally clear.
This memorandum concerns the sentencing of Justin Clarke-Samuel, publicly known as “Ghetts”, at the Central Criminal Court for causing the death of Yubin Tamang by dangerous driving.
On 3 March 2026, Clarke-Samuel was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment for causing death by dangerous driving and a concurrent 15 months for dangerous driving, together with a 17-year driving disqualification. The sentencing judge, His Honour Judge Mark Lucraft KC, Recorder of London, described the driving as “a prolonged, persistent and deliberate course of dangerous driving” and placed the case in Category A culpability.
The purpose of this memorandum is not to revisit the formal
legality of the conviction. The guilty pleas are already entered, and the
factual findings are largely set out in the sentencing remarks. The purpose
here is narrower and more analytical: to identify the structure of the defence
case at sentencing, to explain why that structure was rational from the
standpoint of punishment reduction, and to show how the system continues to assign decisive moral weight to claimed mental states even where the visible facts are already grave beyond dispute.
The central finding of this review is simple. The defence did not mainly try to deny what happened; it tried to recast what happened. More precisely, it sought to make a clear distinction between tangible consequences and intangible intent. The defence strategy was to concede responsibility for the outcome while pushing for the kindest possible interpretation of the defendant’s state of mind -- including the confabulation of ominous stalkers and an illusory car giving chase.
Case Background
On the evening of 18 October 2025, Clarke-Samuel drove from
central London toward his home in Woodford in a BMW M5 after drinking alcohol.
The court found that during the return journey he engaged in a sustained sequence of dangerous acts: he brushed a motorcyclist’s leg, failed to stop,
drove through repeated red lights, mounted the pavement to bypass traffic,
collided with another car, continued driving, repeatedly crossed onto the wrong
side of the road, endangered cyclists and drivers, and ultimately struck
20-year-old Yubin Tamang on Redbridge Lane East at high speed.
The sentencing remarks state that in the five seconds before
impact, the vehicle’s speed increased from 36mph to 74mph, and that the speed
at impact was 67mph in a 30mph zone. After the impact, Clarke-Samuel did not
remain at the scene. Judge Lucraft noted that the brake lights could be seen
after the collision, but Clarke-Samuel then drove on, failed to call emergency
services, and continued for roughly eight miles before reaching an area near
his home.
Tamang, described by the court as a student from Nepal, suffered catastrophic injuries and later died in the hospital. Victim impact
statements from his family and friends described extensive emotional,
psychological, and practical devastation. His mother told the court that the
incident had left the family in “a state of unrest” and “an unimaginable sense
of loss”.
Defendant Profile
Clarke-Samuel was 41 years old at the time of sentencing. He was not
sentenced as an unknown defendant appearing in a vacuum. He entered court as a
successful and publicly recognised musician with extensive character material
submitted on his behalf. Judge Lucraft recorded letters describing him as a
father, mentor, supporter of young men, helper of the homeless, and contributor
to community work and charitable causes. The court accepted that his remorse
was genuine and that many of the positive accounts provided on his behalf were
sincere.
The court also noted his criminal history, including earlier convictions for robbery and multiple driving offences dating back to youth and early adulthood, among them aggravated vehicle taking, dangerous driving, driving whilst disqualified, driving without insurance, and related breaches. Although the judge acknowledged that these convictions were old, he stated expressly that “they cannot be ignored”.
This combination is significant. On one side stood an ugly
evidential record of driving conduct. On the other stood a mitigation profile
designed to show that the defendant was not, in essence, a person of criminal or predatory intent. That contrast is not incidental. It is often the entire battlefield.
Prosecution Position
The prosecution's case was powerful because it rested on
observable material rather than inferential speculation. CCTV footage tracked
much of the journey, while vehicle data fixed the acceleration pattern before impact.
A breath reading later accepted by the defendant recorded 45 micrograms of
alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath, above the legal limit of 35. A cannabis
swipe was positive. A taxi driver, Mr. Ansari, described the earlier collision.
A motorcyclist, Nico Sagarra, described being brushed by the BMW and then
following the vehicle.
The judge’s language reflected the strength of the evidence.
He referred to “a quite appalling litany of incidents of dangerous driving”, described the footage of the fatal impact as “simply shocking”, and concluded
that the conduct before the fatality involved “a series of deliberate decisions
to flout the normal driving rules and a deliberate disregard for the safety of
other road users”.
Importantly, the prosecution did not need to prove an
intention to kill in order to secure a lengthy prison sentence. The offence
remained causing death by dangerous driving, not murder. But the evidential
picture plainly raised a sentencing danger for the defence: if the court came
to see the entire episode as morally adjacent to intentional violence, or as
practical indifference of the highest order, the punishment exposure would rise
within the available range.
Alleged Actions
The phrase “alleged actions” remains useful for structuring the report, but by the sentencing stage, many of these actions were not meaningfully disputed. Clarke-Samuel had pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and causing
death by dangerous driving. What remained open was the interpretive frame
placed around those actions.
The conduct established before the court included the
following: drinking alcohol before driving; brushing a motorcyclist’s leg and
failing to stop; repeatedly driving through red lights; driving onto the
pavement to bypass stationary traffic; colliding with a Mercedes and driving
away; crossing repeatedly onto the wrong side of the road; causing cyclists and
drivers to take evasive action; accelerating to extreme speed before impact;
striking Tamang at 67mph in a 30mph zone; failing to stop at the fatal scene;
and making no call to emergency services.
A sequence like this presents an obvious interpretive problem for any defence team. If left morally unframed, it reads not as one terrible lapse but as a corridor of escalating disregard. It invites the conclusion that the defendant treated public space, other bodies, and ordinary rules of safety as obstacles to be overridden. That is precisely the conclusion mitigation counsel worked to dilute.
Claimed Intentions
The main defence narrative appears in the written Basis of
Plea summarised by the judge. Clarke-Samuel said that after drinking in central
London, he saw “four people in a Mercedes A-Class” who “looked suspicious” and
whom he believed might pose a threat to him or his car. The plea also referred
to a prior incident years earlier in which he had allegedly been approached at
gunpoint and had a vehicle taken. According to the defence account, he believed
he was being followed and threatened, and this belief “led to your erratic and
dangerous driving”.
The structure of this claim deserves careful attention because it
was not merely explanatory. It was exculpatory in a partial sense, but it sought to
convert what the footage suggested was persistent voluntary recklessness into
something more reactive and psychologically compressed: a frightened man trying
to get home, not a man revelling in danger, not a man choosing recklessness for
its own sake, and certainly not a man acting with any desire to injure a
pedestrian.
The same logic extended beyond the supposed threat
narrative. The defence also relied on remorse, past good works, community
support, and personal transformation. Character letters described Clarke-Samuel
as someone who motivated young men, helped others through his platform,
supported community groups, and used his success for good. The point of
this material was not sentimental decoration. It was part of the same architecture that attempted to reframe the outcome towards a more sentimental view of the man behind it -- to be understood as morally better than the event itself suggested.
From the standpoint of sentence reduction, this was a
rational strategy. When the outward facts are ugly, counsel seeks refuge in
inward framing. The defence cannot undo the death, the speed, the drink, the
failure to stop, or the CCTV. What it can do is argue that the defendant’s mind
should not be classed with the worst available interpretation of the conduct.
That is often the whole game in common law courts.
Judicial Response to Claimed Intentions
Judge Lucraft largely rejected the most important
intention-based mitigation. He stated that “no vehicle can be seen on any
available CCTV to follow your car” and further held: “I do not find your belief
to be one that mitigates this driving or the seriousness of it”. That finding
is central. It means the court heard the appeal to fear and refused to allow it
to materially soften the evaluation of the conduct.
Yet the rejection of that specific narrative should not
obscure the broader systemic point. The defence still advanced it because the
system still rewards such attempts when they succeed. Sentencing remains highly
responsive to how a defendant’s mental state is narrated: frightened rather than
callous, panicked rather than thrill-seeking, remorseful rather than cold,
socially valuable rather than antisocial. Even where one strand fails, the
larger mitigation package may still work at the margins.
That is exactly what occurred here. The court rejected the
claimed threat as mitigation but accepted remorse and substantial
character evidence, and awarded a significant reduction for the guilty pleas. The judge stated that before the plea, the sentence on count two would have been 16 years, and that after allowance for the plea, the sentence imposed was 12 years. He also described the defendant's remorse as genuine.
Sentencing Analysis
The court found the case fell within Category A culpability
under the causing death by dangerous driving guideline. Judge Lucraft said the
conduct was prolonged, persistent, and deliberate; that alcohol impaired the
driving; and that the speed immediately before impact was significantly above
the limit. For Category A, the guideline starting point is 12 years’ custody
with a range of 8-18 years.
The judge also treated count one, dangerous driving, as a
highest-category example in its own right, with a starting point of 18 months and a range of 1-2 years. The aggravating factors included previous driving
convictions, alcohol consumption, failure to stop after the earlier collisions,
and failure to stop after the fatal crash. He expressly rejected the supposed
fear or threat from others as a matter of reducing seriousness.
It is therefore inaccurate to say that the court swallowed
the defence whole. It did not. But it is equally inaccurate to say that
intention-based advocacy played no role. The sentence still emerged from a
process in which the court had to evaluate remorse, personal character,
mitigation submissions, and the moral significance of the defendant’s stated
mental posture. That is the feature requiring attention.
The Defence Mechanism
The defence mechanism in this case can be described in one
sentence: concede conduct and contest character of mind.
This mechanism has several recurring components: acknowledge
the bad facts early where denial is impossible; offer a psychological
explanation that lowers apparent wickedness; present evidence of remorse;
introduce character material showing the defendant as useful, caring, or
improved; urge the court not to treat the act as expressive of the worst
possible intention; and seek a sentence that reflects tragedy without
collapsing into the harsher penalties associated with openly malicious purpose.
In Clarke-Samuel’s case, all six components are visible. The
conduct was admitted. The psychological explanation was fear of threat. The
remorse was expressed in writing and accepted as genuine. The character
material was extensive. The mitigation case urged the court to view the event as dreadful but not animated by evil intent. The result was not leniency in
the ordinary popular sense, but it was a sentence materially shaped within a
framework where mental framing still mattered.
The Wider Problem
The real issue exposed by this case is not that the defence
lawyers behaved improperly. They behaved exactly as defence lawyers are
expected to behave. The issue is that the system repeatedly encourages disputes over invisible intention, even when a visible consequence is already sufficient to define the moral seriousness of the event.
A young man was killed. The vehicle was travelling at more
than double the speed limit. The driver had consumed alcohol beyond the legal
limit. He did not remain at the scene. He did not call for help. He had already
endangered numerous other road users moments earlier. These are not hidden
matters. These are the case.
And yet sentencing discourse still becomes saturated with
narratives about fear, panic, trauma, personal goodness, community standing,
and remorse. Some of these things may be psychologically real. That is not the
point. The point is that they are used to negotiate responsibility downward by
altering how the same outward destruction is morally classified.
The asymmetry is obvious. Had Clarke-Samuel said he wanted
to run someone over, or that he did not care whether someone lived or died, the
sentencing atmosphere would have transformed immediately. The same death, the
same speed, the same failure to stop, the same shattered body would have been
treated as morally worse because the declared intention was worse. In
practical terms, this means punishment is not only responding to the external
event. It is responding to the narrated interior (something that is subjective, hard to determine, and effectively "guesswork" in all cases).
That is the forest-and-trees problem. The law can become so
occupied with parsing inner motive that it blurs the plain meaning of
conduct. The victim is dead, whether the driver claims fear or not. The body
absorbs impact, not intention. Victims are traumatised by what is done to them without their consent, not by the later vocabulary used to soften what was done.
Final Assessment
The Ghetts defence was not a defence of innocence. It was a
defence against the harshest moral reading of admitted conduct.
It sought to ensure that the defendant was sentenced as a
frightened, remorseful, socially valuable man who drove catastrophically,
rather than as a man whose actions should be read as bordering on intentional
violence. That distinction matters enormously inside the current legal
framework. It is why lawyers continue to press intention-based mitigation even
in cases dominated by hard evidence of danger and death.
In this instance, the court resisted part of that invitation. Judge Lucraft rejected the claim that Clarke-Samuel was being followed in any evidentially meaningful sense and refused to let that belief mitigate the seriousness of the driving. That deserves notice. The implied proposition is that had there been someone threatening Ghetts like he claimed, then his devastating car ride would be seen in a different light, thereby worthy of a lower prison sentence.
But the broader lesson
remains intact: the system still attaches large sentencing value to a claimed inward posture, and therefore, defendants still have every incentive to
narrate themselves in morally protective terms.
In this case, the visible facts already told the essential story. A sustained course of dangerous driving ended in the death of Yubin Tamang. Everything that followed was a struggle over how to classify that reality. Taken together, the sad conclusion is that the pattern on display here (prioritising intentions/thoughts over outcomes/actions has hardened into precedent and is now persistent rather than exceptional.
Written by George Tchetvertakov
