SENTENCING STATEMENTS

Upon sentencing, Lord Arthurson made the following remarks:

"Robert Smith, you have at today’s continued preliminary hearing tendered pleas of guilty to one charge libelling the contravention by you of section 1 of the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 and another charge libelling the common law crime of assault to severe injury and permanent disfigurement.

Charge 1 relates to a lengthy and sustained campaign, over a libel period running from April 2019 to June 2026, of appalling domestic abuse and violence perpetrated by you against the complainer named in that charge. Your conduct included the repeated use of knives and neck compression, causing loss of consciousness, on innumerable occasions. Your victim feared for her life and contemplated suicide, such was the gravity of your conduct towards her. Following the particular events libelled in charge 2, you brandished a knife at the complainer, and again compressed her throat, restricting her breathing. You continued to conduct abuse against your victim following your remand into custody, calling her with threats to set her house on fire and threatening her with violence should she testify against you.

Charge 2 involved the use by you on 2 and 3 June 2025 of a glass wine bottle as a weapon, and thereafter that bottle in a broken condition. You repeatedly struck your victim, another complainer, with the bottle, then repeatedly struck him on the neck with the broken bottle. Your victim sustained three fractured facial bones, involving his eye socket, nose and jaw. Deep wounds were also sustained by him, in particular a wound to the back of his head which was closed with 16 staples; a neck wound which was closed with 5 staples; and a smaller puncture neck wound which was closed with 1 staple. He has been left with permanent scarring. The photographs of these wounds, in particular of those to the head and the larger neck wound, are quite appalling. The agreed narrative in this case additionally records that the injuries sustained were potentially life threatening.

You are aged 36. You have accrued to date some 32 groups of previous convictions and served on my count 25 custodial sentences. Weapons have been involved in 9 of these groups of convictions, namely knives, a metal pole, a sharp object, a bottle and a hammer. You have 2 convictions for domestically aggravated offending. On indictment you have been convicted of aggravated violence at Glasgow High Court and at sheriff and jury level you have been convicted of assault to injury, multiple assaults and robberies and in 2024 hamesucken and assault to severe injury and robbery. You have in total no less than 10 groups of previous convictions on indictment. You committed the crime libelled in charge 2 on this indictment while you were the subject of an unexpired portion of your last custodial sentence.

I have listened carefully to the submissions advanced in mitigation on your behalf by your counsel in the course of this hearing, and note in particular what has been said by him regarding the utility of your pleas of guilty in this case; your expressed apology to the complainers; your good behaviour to date in custody and your willingness to address your offending behaviour and risk factors related to that while you are in custody.

Your record of offending is truly disgraceful. Very rarely does the court encounter an accused with 10 prior convictions on indictment. I have thought long and hard about commencing an exercise of staged risk assessment in your case, but have on balance determined that I can draw back from that, this being only your second High Court conviction. Instead, however, I propose to impose upon you today a very substantial determinate in cumulo custodial sentence, so that that there is an achievable rehabilitative target for you to seek to attain, through targeted offence‑focussed work undertaken by you while in custody and on licence in due course, but at the same time the public is given a lengthy period of relief and protection from your violent, and regularly weapons‑related, criminality.

You will accordingly serve on charges 1 and 2 of the present indictment, on an in cumulo basis, a sentence of 12 years imprisonment. Had the court been sentencing you separately on each charge, the notional headline periods for each would have been 10 years and 8 years respectively. Taking an in cumulo approach, applying in other words the important sentencing principle of totality, I have reduced the resultant global figure of 18 years to a notional headline in cumulo period of 15 years. Finally, in order to reflect as best I can the appropriate utility reductions which require to be made in respect of the early resolution of various chapters of the criminal conduct in respect of which you have pled guilty at today’s continued preliminary hearing, I have allocated an early plea reduction period of 3 years to that notional headline in cumulo figure, bringing out a final in cumulo sentence of 12 years imprisonment.

This final in cumulo sentence imposed today, of 12 years imprisonment, will not be backdated to the date of your initial remand into custody in these proceedings, which was 4 June 2025, but will instead be backdated to an agreed notional backdating date, thereby taking into account the unexpired portion of your last sentence of imprisonment, which counsel have helpfully advised is 10 December 2025.                .

Finally, on unopposed Crown motion, the court pronounces separate non‑harassment orders in respect of each of the complainers named in charges 1 and 2.  You will not approach or contact them, in any way whatsoever, directly or indirectly, or attempt to do so, for an indefinite period."

28 October 2026