Davies, R. v

In sentencing for rape, the court should begin with the applicable guideline bracket and starting point. A serious assault, humiliation and the presence of a child in the home may justify an uplift, but the sentence must also reflect mitigating features such as previous good character, genuine remorse and an early guilty plea.

Where no feature takes the offence into a more serious guideline bracket, aggravating circumstances should not produce a disproportionate uplift from the standard starting point. The proper sentence after a trial was six years’ imprisonment; full credit for the guilty plea reduced it to four years.

The appellant pleaded guilty at Bournemouth Crown Court to rape by oral penetration of his former partner, with whom he had been living. During a drunken argument he assaulted her, causing injury to her hand, and she submitted to sexual acts because of the violence and fear.

He confessed after arrest, pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity, had no previous convictions and expressed genuine remorse. The judge imposed six years’ imprisonment after allowing maximum credit for the plea.

The appeal challenged the sentence as excessive in principle. The central issue was whether the offence fell within the primary guideline bracket and, if so, what allowance should be made for aggravating and mitigating features and the guilty plea.

1. Appeal allowed. The sentence of six years’ imprisonment was excessive. It was equivalent to nine years following a trial and was wrong in principle.

2. The court accepted that the rape was disgraceful and had seriously affected the complainant. The violence, humiliation, the appellant’s size relative to the complainant, and the fact that their child was in the home were aggravating features. The violence was also over and above that necessary to commit the rape.

3. Nevertheless, nothing took the case outside the primary bracket in the applicable Sentencing Guidelines Council guidance. The standard five-year starting point, first identified in R v Millberry [2002] EWCA Crim 2891, remained applicable.

4. The seriousness of the violence and the other aggravating circumstances justified a substantial uplift to six years’ imprisonment after a trial. That increase had to be balanced against the appellant’s previous good character and genuine remorse, which carried real mitigating weight.

5. Giving full credit for the early guilty plea, the appropriate sentence was four years’ imprisonment. The sentence was substituted accordingly.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): Allowed the appeal against sentence and substituted four years’ imprisonment.
• Crown Court at Bournemouth: On 20 September 2007, following a guilty plea to rape, imposed six years’ imprisonment.