Case Precedent

Concurrent sentences of two years’ imprisonment for historic offences of indecent assault and indecency with a child committed against the offender’s sister when he was aged 14-16 were reduced to concurrent one-year sentences. The offender, now over 70, was gravely ill and nearing the end of his life, and the original sentence was, in justice and in mercy, longer than necessary.

Although a judge had unnecessarily and improperly intervened during a defendant’s examination-in-chief, the interventions were not so significant as to materially impair the defendant’s ability to put his case before the jury. The judge’s interventions, combined with deficiencies in his summing-up, had not deprived the defendant of a fair trial.

The court upheld an offender’s convictions for indecent assault and attempting to inflict grievous bodily harm committed against his younger brother when they were both under 18. It could not be said that the manner in which the trial was conducted by the offender’s own counsel was so flawed as to render his conviction unsafe.

A total sentence of 13 years and two months’ imprisonment imposed following a trial of a step-father for four historic sexual offences against his step-daughter was manifestly excessive where the judge had both ordered all sentences to run consecutively, as well as imposing sentences at the higher end of the scale. It was replaced with a sentence of 11 years and two months’ imprisonment.

A judge’s decision to stay a prosecution as an abuse of process on the basis of a failure by the prosecution to properly pursue a line of enquiry when investigating allegations of sexual assault was wrong in principle and did not constitute a reasonable exercise of his discretion.

A 78-year-old man whose extradition to the Falkland Islands was sought in order to prosecute him for 12 alleged historic sexual abuse offences from the mid-1980s was bailed. The unusual features of the case, including the individual’s ill-health and his caring responsibilities, and the fact that he had not offended since completing a sex offenders’ treatment programme in 2002, meant that the risks of him absconding or committing further offences were minimal.

Following the appellant’s retrial for sexual offences, the judge had been correct to impose a special sentence of custody for offenders of particular concern. However, the term imposed, namely a custodial term of 16 years and an extended licence period of one year, contravened the Criminal Appeal Act 1968 Sch.2 para.2(1) because it was “of greater severity” than the 17-year sentence imposed at the original trial. That was because of the release regime applicable to offenders who were subject to a special sentence of custody for offenders of particular concern.

Convictions for sexual offences were safe despite the fact that material about the complainant had not been disclosed to the defence, because the picture of the complainant put before the jury was nevertheless a sufficiently accurate one.

A judge had had insufficient regard to totality when imposing consecutive extended sentences totalling 38 years on a prolific sex offender who had pleaded guilty to committing 137 offences over the course of 10 years. A large number of the offences involved the deliberate targeting of vulnerable children on the internet, persuading them to provide him with naked images of themselves and blackmailing them to provide increasingly graphic and humiliating images of them taking part in degrading acts. An extended sentence of 25 years’ custody, with an extension period of eight years, was substituted for the original sentence.