JUDGES repeatedly questioned why Britain’s ‘most prolific offender’ was being prosecuted – when he was in a care home with alcohol-induced memory problems.
Andrew Robinson, 54, was charged with assaulting emergency workers and racially-aggravated harassment, after he was arrested in Oxford in July 2021 then threw his breakfast at a staff member in a police station.
Well-known on the city’s streets, Robinson has more than 650 offences to his name.
He has spent years going in-and-out of prison for – generally – short stretches. Diagnosed with a personality disorder, the heavy drinker has been repeatedly evicted from supported accommodation placements for racism and assaulting staff.
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However, after a stay at hospital in London for a serious brain problem, he has stopped drinking and been given a place at a ‘dry’ care home.
A series of psychiatric and psychological reports prepared for his latest court case charted his various physical and mental health problems – some of which were linked to his long-standing alcoholism.
Noting that Robinson had been suffering from seizures and memory ‘absences’ at the time of the offending, and could suffer a seizure if put through a criminal court trial, one of the doctors asked the Crown Prosecution Service to consider whether it was in the public interest to prosecute the repeat offender.
That request was echoed by two circuit judges – Judge Maria Lamb and Judge Michael Gledhill KC – who repeatedly asked the CPS to review whether it was in the public interest to proceed.
The CPS did; and repeatedly came to the same answer: that it was in the public interest to prosecute.
In January, when the case was before the same judge, prosecutor Robert Lindsey explained that the ‘public interest test’ had been considered by the CPS reviewing lawyers.
Robinson had offended against people ‘working in their public duties’ and he ‘is the most prolific offender in the UK with 166 offences on his record in relation to the courts and offending against the police alone, Mr Lindsey said earlier this year.
On Thursday (March 2), Judge Gledhill suggested the views from the bench had been ‘politely put [to] one side’.
He was asked by Robinson’s barrister, Honor Fitzgerald, to give a ‘Goodyear indication’ – to say what sentence her client would receive if he pleaded guilty to the assaults on the police officers and the racially-aggravated harassment.
The judge said he would impose a conditional discharge, meaning that Robinson would only be punished for the offences if he reoffended.
But he made it clear that his comments in a lengthy judgement and his decision to impose a conditional discharge ‘in no way takes away from the seriousness of these offences’.
“The behaviour of Mr Robinson in the street, in the hospital and in the police station on July 6, 2021, was appalling and must have been upsetting if not frightening for everybody concerned,” he said on Thursday.
Robinson, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to the three offences: assault on an emergency worker and racially-aggravated harassment.
He received an 18 month conditional discharge.
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