Frankie Smith, the mother of murdered toddler Star Hobson, has had her eight-year prison sentence for causing or allowing her daughter’s death increased to 12 years at the Court of Appeal.
Smith, 20, was jailed at Bradford Crown Court in December last year for her role in the death of her 16-month-old daughter, who was killed by Smith’s former partner Savannah Brockhill.
Smith’s sentence had been referred to the court by the Attorney General’s Office under the unduly lenient sentencing scheme, and senior judges considered whether to increase it at a hearing on Tuesday.
Star died after she was taken to hospital in September 2020, having suffered “utterly catastrophic” and “unsurvivable” injuries at Brockhill’s hands.
Brockhill, 28, a bouncer and security guard, was found guilty of Star’s murder, while Smith was found guilty of causing or allowing her death following a trial at Bradford Crown Court.
During the trial, jurors heard Smith’s family and friends had growing fears about bruising they saw on the little girl in the months before she died and made a series of complaints to social services.
In each case Brockhill, of Hawthorn Close, Keighley, and Smith, of Wesley Place, Halifax Road, Keighley, managed to convince social workers that marks on Star were accidental or that the complaints were made maliciously by people who did not like their relationship.
Prosecutors described how the injuries that caused Star’s death involved extensive damage to her abdominal cavity “caused by a severe and forceful blow or blows, either in the form of punching, stamping or kicking to the abdomen”.
Jurors also heard there were other injuries on her body which meant that “in the course of her short life, Star had suffered a number of significant injuries at different times”.
Sentencing Brockhill and Smith, judge Mrs Justice Lambert said Star’s “short life was marked by neglect, cruelty and injury”.
She was found to have suffered two brain injuries, numerous ribs fractures, the fracture and refracture of her leg, and a skull fracture when she died.
On Tuesday, three senior judges increased her sentence to 12 years' detention.
Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Mr Justice Sweeney and Mr Justice Jeremy Baker, found that the sentencing judge was wrong to reduce Smith's sentence from the starting point based on mitigation, including of her losing her daughter.
"On the facts of this case, where Miss Smith had treated Star with such cruelty... the judge was wrong to identify this as a mitigating feature and then give it the weight she did."
Dame Victoria continued: "There was little, if any, to be said in mitigation.
"In our judgment no less a sentence than 12 years would meet the justice of this case."
The judge said that Star was "particularly vulnerable due to her very young age", and that "self-evidently, Miss Smith was in a position of trust".
