The Supreme Court has dismissed FE’s appeal against his rape sentence and restored the sentence imposed by the Central Criminal Court: a 14-year headline sentence, reduced by two years for mitigation, with a further two years suspended. The result is 10 years’ imprisonment, including the suspended portion, and five years of post-release supervision.
The ruling, delivered by Mr Justice Peter Charleton on 26 February 2020, concerned only the rape sentence. The Director of Public Prosecutions had not appealed any of the sentences imposed by the trial judge, Kennedy J, and the Supreme Court said it could not use this appeal to increase the sentences for the other offences or change their concurrent terms.
The rape and threats to kill were contested at trial. A jury convicted FE. He had pleaded guilty to two other offences arising from a hammer attack at his wife’s parents’ home. The court described how, on 25 May 2014, FE threatened his wife with a knife in their home and raped her. The judgment also recounted threats and monitoring of her movements, and the later attack in which she and her mother were struck with a hammer.
Kennedy J had imposed concurrent sentences of five years for a threat to kill during the rape, three years for a threat to kill by phone the following day, five years for a threat at a shopping centre on 9 June, seven years and six months for attempted serious harm at the parents’ home, and three years and six months for assault causing harm to the wife’s mother. None was appealed by the prosecution.
FE first unsuccessfully appealed his convictions. He then appealed the rape sentence, arguing it was disproportionately high. The Court of Appeal reduced the headline sentence from 14 years to 12 years and suspended 18 months, leaving eight years and six months to serve. The Supreme Court had previously found that reduction rested on an incorrect legal basis. In this appeal, it rejected FE’s argument that the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction to correct it.
The Supreme Court said the rape fell within the category of cases warranting a headline sentence of 10 to 15 years, given factors including violence or intimidation beyond that associated with the offence and abuse of trust. It found no error in the trial judge’s approach, which placed the case in the upper bracket of that category. It also said there was no basis to reduce the sentence because time had passed; the material before it showed FE had engaged with educational and rehabilitative opportunities in prison.
The court quashed the Court of Appeal’s order and replaced it with the original sentence. The other sentences remained undisturbed.