SENTENCING

A challenge, by way of judicial review, by a young offender convicted of the murder and rape of a 14-year-old girl, to an excepting direction which discharged a reporting restriction order imposed under the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 s.45(3), was refused.

A sentence of 16 months’ imprisonment imposed on a man in his early 20s who had shared indecent images of children with workmates on a building site, but had done so for shock value and had no unhealthy interest in children, was suspended on appeal. An immediate custodial sentence was disproportionate where the possession and distribution had been limited, he had acted out of extreme stupidity, was of previous good character and where his mother was dependent on him financially and as her carer.

A custodial sentence of 9 years and 6 months and a further probation period of one year imposed on a 91-year-old former monk for historical offences of indecent assault, buggery and attempted buggery was unduly lenient, and was replaced with a custodial term of 12 years.

The appropriate total sentence for two offences of sexual assault and one of blackmail was an immediate custodial term of three years. When imposing a suspended sentence of 18 months’ imprisonment, the sentencing judge had given too much weight to mitigating factors, including the fact that the offender had Asperger’s Syndrome, and insufficient weight to the seriousness of the blackmail offence. He had also erred in finding that the victim’s apparent consent to sexual activity on one occasion had lessened the seriousness of the subsequent sexual assaults.

A sentence of five months’ imprisonment which had been imposed on a father following his conviction for sexually assaulting his two-year-old son was unduly lenient. The offence merited a sentence of 18 months’ imprisonment together with the imposition of a sexual offences prevention order.

As the Attorney General had a statutory responsibility to personally consider whether sentences should be referred to the Court of Appeal as unduly lenient, it was inimical to the public interest for judges, when exercising their discretion as to the provision of a transcript of a sentence hearing, to restrict or limit the provision of such information on such a request from the Attorney General.

There might be cases where guidance from the trial judge on myths and stereotypes in rape cases would be appropriate to benefit a defendant, but the instant case, in which the defendant was charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice after making repeated and false allegations of rape, was not one of them. Given the evidence called, even if the guidance had been given, it would not have assisted the defendant.

Total sentences of six years and nine months’ imprisonment and six years’ imprisonment imposed on a male and female offender respectively following guilty pleas to child sex offences were lenient, but not unduly lenient. The female offender had sent the male offender images of her and her daughter, aged between two and six, engaging in sexual activity. The offending had been rightly categorised in Category 2A of the relevant guideline and the judge’s approach to sentencing was not flawed.

The terms of a sexual offences prevention order imposed on an offender who had been sentenced for voyeurism, which included an almost blanket ban on using the internet, were changed where its terms did not conform to the guidance given in R. v Smith (Steven) [2011] EWCA Crim 1772 with the result that it was unworkable and disproportionate.