The Court of Criminal Appeal replaced two life sentences imposed on Christopher Griffin for rape with a sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment. The court said the offences were extremely serious, but did not fall within the exceptional category warranting discretionary life sentences.
In its judgment delivered on 7 October 2011, the court treated Griffin’s application for leave to appeal as the hearing of the appeal. It found that the sentencing judge had erred in imposing life sentences and substituted a 15-year term on the two rape counts. The source does not state a separate ruling on the concurrent five-year sentences imposed for nine sexual assault counts; it says there was no complaint about those sentences.
The offences occurred over about eight years, beginning when the complainant was eight and ending when she was 16. The court said Griffin was the partner of the complainant’s mother and occupied a position analogous to a parent. It noted that the offending became progressively more invasive, included two rapes, and caused the complainant severe trauma. The court also took account of Griffin’s serious record of 18 previous convictions, several involving firearms. It noted that most of the convictions were from when he was a juvenile and that some were road-traffic offences.
The court found there were no mitigating factors. Griffin had contested the charges, had not expressed remorse and had proposed no rehabilitation programme. The complainant had to give evidence on two occasions, the judgment said.
The appeal court separately criticised evidence about shootings, grenade attacks and other violence described during the sentencing process as “extraneous events.” No evidence identified the perpetrators or implicated Griffin in those events, apart from evidence that he was a victim of one shooting. The court said the events could not be taken into account and should have been left entirely out of the sentencing decision. It considered that the trial judge appeared to have attributed some responsibility to Griffin and treated his record as including those events.
Although the court said Griffin’s criminal record could properly be considered, it concluded that the sentencing judge had not explained how the case met the exceptional threshold for a discretionary life sentence. It held that a very severe determinate sentence was warranted and imposed 15 years on the two rape counts.