A man convicted of severely injuring a lifelong friend by drinking and driving has had his prison sentence extended, despite having been released from custody.

John Wardman had been sentenced to six months in prison for causing grievous bodily harm to Alex Doyle through impaired driving in a December 2010 crash on Manse Road.

During his trial, the court heard that Wardman was driving his brother, Christopher Wardman, and Mr Doyle home after an evening in Hamilton when he struck a wall. He then attempted to continue driving, striking a second wall in the process.

A tow-truck driver who happened upon the scene of the crash testified that Wardman had asked about getting the damaged vehicle towed to his house. The driver instead called for an ambulance after seeing Mr Doyle bleeding profusely in the back seat.

Mr Doyle sustained multiple injuries, including a severed artery in his brain, a fractured skull, a fracture of his right eye socket and a fractured left wrist.

When police arrived at the scene Christopher Wardman claimed that he had been the driver, but said his brother was behind the wheel once arrested. He subsequently pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice and was fined.

John Wardman meanwhile was convicted of several charges following trial, including causing grievous bodily harm to Mr Doyle through impaired driving, and was sentenced to six months behind bars.

He subsequently launched an appeal against his conviction for failing to provide the necessaries of life. During a hearing lawyer Saul Froomkin, representing Wardman, argued that Puisne Judge Charles-Etta Simmons had misdirected the jury on the charge.

Although the offence has been part of the Criminal Code for almost a century, the Court of Appeal noted that there is no known record of it having been used by prosecutors before this case. While such laws have been used in other jurisdictions, the Court said they are not applied to traffic cases.

After considering the facts, the Court of Appeal concluded that Mrs Justice Simmons may have confused the jury in her efforts to assist them, saying: “Her task was an unenviable one, and she deserves sympathy because she was compelled to provide assistance in relation to an obscure and complex offence which ought not to have been charged in the circumstances of this case.

“In these reasons, we consider the conviction on this count to be demonstrably unsafe and we quash it.”

However the Court also found in favour of an appeal by the Crown to increase Wardman’s sentence, which prosecutors had called manifestly inadequate in the circumstances of the case.

In their judgement, the Court said that Mrs Justice Simmons had erred in considering “expressions of remorse” and compensation paid to Mr Doyle in his favour.

“At the time of sentence and to this day the offender has maintained that he was not the driver,” the judgement stated. “Remorse is incompatible with that stance. Moreover, to attach weight to the compensation paid to Alex Doyle was, as Mr Froomkin was eventually constrained to concede, quite wrong. These were significant errors.”

The Court also noted the “deeply troubling” aggravating factors, including the amount of alcohol in Wardman’s blood, his manner of driving, the “reprehensible” attempt to divert responsibility for the crash and the lack of “real remorse”.

“The ‘remorse’ did not embrace a real acceptance of responsibility — quite the contrary,” the judgement stated. “In truth, the only real mitigation lay in the facts that the offence was very out of character and the appellant’s current family circumstances are saddened by his father’s terminal illness.”

While they noted that Wardman had already been released from prison, they found that increasing his sentence to a year in custody would be appropriate, adding that the current level of sentencing for such offences is too low.

“It is our view that, in future, if the facts of this case were to recur, with precisely the same aggravating and mitigating features, the appropriate sentence would be not less than three years’ imprisonment,” the judgement stated.

“We have not imposed that on this appellant because it would be unfair to do so at this stage, having regard to the common understanding of the appropriate level of sentence which existed hitherto. Future offenders should expect no such mercy.”

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