The Court of Appeal has allowed an appeal against sentence by M.J. and increased the suspended portion of the sentence imposed for five indecent assaults committed in 1978.
In a judgment delivered on 13 January 2021, the court quashed the Circuit Court sentence and substituted a sentence suspending the final two years and nine months, up from one year and nine months. The judgment does not state the revised aggregate sentence or give further detail about the terms of suspension.
M.J. had received an aggregate sentence of eight years and nine months on 15 February 2019, with the final one year and nine months suspended. The five convictions concerned assaults on a complainant between 1 May and 31 August 1978 at M.J.’s home, while the complainant was temporarily staying there.
The appeal argued that the 21-month headline sentences for each count were excessive, that consecutive sentences should not have been imposed, and that the sentencing judge had given insufficient weight to mitigation, including the absence of previous convictions and M.J.’s record in the decades since the offences.
The Court of Appeal rejected the challenge to the headline sentence and the use of consecutive sentences. It said the seriousness of the offences meant the headline sentence could not be less than 21 months, and concluded that consecutive sentences were within the trial judge’s discretion. The court also said there was no obligation for the trial judge to warn counsel in advance that consecutive sentences might be imposed.
However, the appeal court disagreed with the sentencing judge’s view that no mitigation was present. It identified M.J.’s age of about 20 or 21 at the time of the offences and the fact that M.J. had not offended or come to adverse notice in the following 40 years as matters that had to be considered in mitigation. It said those factors justified limited intervention.
The complainant’s identity is withheld in the judgment. The Court of Appeal’s judgment refers to a separate appeal against conviction decided on 30 July 2020, but this sentence appeal did not revisit the convictions.