The Court of Appeal has dismissed E.D.’s appeal against a 10-year prison sentence for rape, finding the sentence was at the higher end of the reasonable range but would not be interfered with.
In an ex tempore judgment delivered on 25 June 2018, the court said the sentence remained within the range reasonably available to the sentencing judge. The appeal concerned the sentence only. E.D.’s appeal against conviction had already been dismissed on 20 June 2018.
The court said E.D. was convicted of raping the complainant on 23 July 2014 after forcibly entering her apartment, taking her downstairs to an outside area and raping her there. The judgment said she sustained mild bruising. Her daughter barricaded herself in a bedroom with a kitchen knife while E.D. tried to force his way in. Gardaí found the daughter highly distressed when they arrived.
The sentencing judge set a headline term of 12 years and reduced it to 10 years to account for mitigating factors, while crediting E.D. for about nine months already spent in custody. The judge declined to suspend any part of the sentence.
E.D. argued that the sentence was disproportionate, that the sentencing judge wrongly assessed the offence’s gravity and failed to give adequate weight to mitigation, rehabilitation and comparable cases. Mitigating circumstances identified by the sentencing judge included E.D.’s difficult childhood, low intellectual functioning, relative youth, foreign nationality, family support in Ireland and the effect imprisonment would have on his relationship with his two children.
The Court of Appeal said the sentencing approach was otherwise “impeccable” and generally complied with Supreme Court principles on proportionality. It noted the sentencing judge had considered the violation of the complainant’s home, the fear caused to her daughter, the complainant’s relapse into alcoholism and E.D.’s 2010 conviction for assault causing harm to a former partner.
The court distinguished two cases cited by the appellant, DPP v Keane and DPP v Power, saying they differed in important respects, including the absence of violence beyond the rape in those cases. It concluded that the seriousness of this offence, which involved some violence and took place in effect in the complainant’s home, did not take the sentence outside the judge’s discretion. The court dismissed the appeal.