The Court of Appeal reduced two eight-year sentences imposed on D.N. for oral rape to six years each after finding that the sentencing judge had referred to an incorrect term from an earlier case in Wicklow.
In an ex tempore judgment delivered on 22 October 2018, the court allowed the appeal against severity of sentence. The sentences had been imposed by the Central Criminal Court on 15 May 2017, following D.N.’s convictions after trial for two counts of oral rape and four counts of sexual assault. The sexual assault sentences were concurrent with the rape sentences, which were consecutive to sentences imposed in the Wicklow Circuit Court.
The judgment says the sentencing judge considered that, without the Wicklow sentences, a term of about 10 years would have been appropriate for each rape count. He imposed eight years on each, taking account of proportionality and totality. But he referred to a three-and-a-half-year sentence in the Wicklow case. The effective sentence there was seven years.
The Court of Appeal said the error raised a question about whether the judge had intended a global sentence of 11 and a half years rather than the 15 years that resulted. It found that the sentencing judge had expressly reduced the sentences because they were consecutive to the Wicklow term, and said it was obliged to intervene.
The court declined to reduce the sentences by the full three and a half years, saying that would fail to reflect the seriousness of the offending and its aggravating factors. It instead reduced each rape sentence from eight years to six. The judgment’s final paragraph records that change; it does not state that the Court of Appeal altered the other sentences or the post-release supervision provision.
The appeal court rejected the argument that rehabilitation should have been given greater weight, observing that the appellant had made no admissions of responsibility. It also recorded submissions about his age, destitution, prior good character, service, prison regime and anticipated loss of standing in the community. The sentencing judge had identified the complainant’s age, grooming and the appellant’s position as local priest and school board member as aggravating circumstances.
The complainant is anonymised in the judgment. The appeal against conviction had already been dismissed in an earlier judgment.