Supreme Court declares mandatory five-year jail term under Firearms Act is unconstitutional

The Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional a law requiring that a mandatory five-year minimum sentence be imposed on some persons convicted under a section of the Firearms Act.

The consequences of that finding for Wayne Ellis, jailed for five years in 2017 after the DPP successfully appealed as unduly lenient a trial judge’s earlier decision to suspend a five-year sentence, will be decided later by the Court of Appeal.