The Court of Appeal quashed the sentences imposed on W. S. for six child-defilement offences and one sexual-assault offence, then imposed a net five-year prison sentence with the final year conditionally suspended.
The court, comprising Birmingham, Sheehan and Edwards JJ., delivered its judgment on 13 October 2015. It allowed the appeal on the basis of an error of principle in the sentencing structure. It did not decide the appellant’s other arguments that the total sentence was excessive, or that the individual defilement sentences failed to give enough credit for mitigation and rehabilitation.
W. S. had pleaded guilty to six counts of defilement and one count of sexual assault. Eight further defilement counts and a second sexual-assault count were taken into consideration. The Court of Appeal said the original trial judge had imposed concurrent four-year terms for the defilement counts and a nine-year term, with the final three years suspended, for the sexual assault.
The appeal court said a sentence for one offence could not be increased beyond what that offence warranted to compensate for the perceived limits of the sentencing range for other offences. Consecutive sentences were available to address that difficulty.
On resentencing, the court imposed two years’ imprisonment for the sexual assault. For each defilement count, it assessed a four-year sentence before mitigation and allowed an 18-month reduction, resulting in two years and six months on each count. Counts 1, 3 and 5 are concurrent with one another and with the sexual-assault sentence. Counts 8, 10 and 13 are concurrent with one another, but consecutive to the first group. The resulting net term is five years.
The court conditionally suspended the final year of that term to encourage rehabilitation. In practical terms, the last 12 months of the sentences on counts 8, 10 and 13 were suspended subject to conditions in a bond. It also re-imposed the post-release supervision order made at first instance and again took the remaining counts into consideration.
The judgment summarised the offending as a course of sexual contact over about five months, beginning when the injured party was 14. The appellant’s identity and the injured party’s identity remain anonymised in the judgment.