Raider in gun terror fails with court plea

An armed robber who threatened a security guard at gunpoint at a Black Country petrol station could spend the rest of his life in jail after he was branded a dangerous criminal.

David Pedley, aged 28, has failed in his test case bid to overturn his open-ended sentence. He hoped judges would agree with him that he did not deserve the indefinite sentence for public protection, but the Appeal Court ruled that he posed a significant risk of causing serious harm to the public and should not be freed until the authorities are convinced it is safe to do so.

He was given the indefinite sentence in 2005 after admitting robbery and possession of a firearm.

Pedley was one of three balaclava-clad men who raided a Shell garage in Bromley Lane, Kingswinford, making off with £12,000.

The hold-up was witnessed by a four-year-old girl who hid in the back of her mother's car at the filling station.

During the raid, Pedley, of Cleve Road, Yardley Wood, Birmingham, brandished a gun and fired into the air.

Representing Pedley at the Appeal Court in London yesterday, Edward Fitzgerald, QC, argued that as his client had no previous convictions for violence, the open-ended sentence, sim-ilar to a life term, was unjustified.

"Here we have a one-off, a youngish person convicted of a single robbery. There was simply no basis on which to draw the inference that he was dangerous.

"While a gun always carries risks, the discharge was always intended to be in the air."

Lord Justice Hughes disagreed and condemned Pedley to an indefinite period behind bars.

Although he had not done anything so serious before, he had 11 previous convictions. The judge, sitting with Mr Justice King and Judge Brian Barker, said the judge who sentenced Pedley had been perfectly entitled to view him as a danger to society.

Earlier, the Appeal Court had rejected Mr Fitzgerald's submission that the test of dangerousness being app-lied to offenders by judges is too low.