Mr AT

Mr AT was convicted in January 2002 of indecent assault and received a sentence of five years’ imprisonment.

The CCRC received an application for review of Mr AT’s sentence in April 2004.

Mr AT had been convicted of three counts of indecent assault on the complainant.

The judge sentenced Mr AT to five years’ imprisonment on count 1 and three years’ imprisonment concurrent for each of counts 2 and 3.

In his sentencing remarks, the judge stated: “Count 2 is the count that sets the tariff, it is the sample count of repeated indecent assaults over a substantial period of years. On that count the sentence will be five years”.

The CCRC considered that this offended against previous judgments.

Case law had settled the principle that an offender could only be sentenced for offences of which they had been convicted, to which they had pleaded guilty, or to which they had asked to be taken into consideration.

Unless Mr AT had specifically admitted other offending, he should only have been sentenced on the basis of one act of indecent assault for each count of which he was convicted.

The CCRC referred the sentence in September 2004.

The Court of Appeal substituted the five year sentence with a three year sentence in March 2005.