R v McDonald
| Jurisdiction | Northern Ireland |
| Judgment Date | 01 January 1989 |
| Date | 01 January 1989 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Northern Ireland) |
- Guidelines - Appropriate starting point in contested cases - Aggravating and mitigating circumstances - Whether sentences excessive.
Three cases were listed together so that the principles which guide judges in sentencing those convicted of rape could be stated. The first case was an application for leave to appeal against a sentence of ten years imposed for two offences of rape. The second case was an appeal against a sentence of life imprisonment imposed for three rapes and other offences of gross indecency on a girl over a period when she was aged between eight and ten. The third case was an appeal against sentences totalling twenty years imprisonment imposed for a rape and several indecent assaults on a girl aged between eight and nine. Held, dismissing the application for leave to appeal in the first case and allowing the appeals in the second and third cases, that, 1, the proper administration of justice required that sentencing should be carried out in accordance with principles which have been established by decisions of the appellate courts. Rape was a serious crime which called for an immediate custodial sentence except in wholly exceptional circumstances and, although in England five years was taken as the starting point, in Northern Ireland the starting point in contested cases should be seven years where there are no aggravating or mitigating circumstances. 2. In the first case, the applicant had used considerable violence towards the complainant, raped her a second time and verbally threatened her and therefore, despite his guilty plea and that his having no previous convictions for sexual or violent offences, the sentence was not either wrong in principle or manifestly excessive. 3. In the second case, a fixed term of 14 years was more appropriate than an...
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DPP v WC
... 1972 IR 402 STANBRIDGE, STATE V MCMAHON 1979 IR 214 CRIMINAL LAW (RAPE) ACT 1981 CRIMINAL LAW (RAPE)(AMDT) ACT 1990 R V MCDONALD & ORS 1989 NI 37 DPP V TIERNAN 1988 IR 250 CRIMINAL JUSTICE ACT 1993 S5 OFFENCES AGAINST THE PERSON ACT 1861 S48 OFFENCES AGAINST THE STATE ACT 1939 S34 CRIMI......
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Attorney General's Reference No.2 of 2004 (Daniel John O'Connell) (AG Ref 1 of 2004)
...others against the offender, but concluded that the risk fell short of the level required for an indeterminate sentence: see R v McDonald [1989] NI 37 at 45-6, per Hutton LCJ. We consider, however, that the case merited a substantial determinate sentence. In our judgment the appropriate sen......
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Queen v AB
...relation to those guidelines. In relation to the offence of rape he then unfortunately referred me to the cases of R v McDonald & others [1989] NI 37 and Attorney General’s Reference (No 1 of 1989) [1989] NI 245 which were the earlier guideline cases in Northern Ireland. The guidelines cont......
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R v W
...The judge was referred to the decisions in which this court has laid down some guidelines in cases of sexual offences, R v McDonald [1989] NI 37 and R v Charters [1989] NI 262. The latter is of particular significance, since it involved offences of incest, indecent assault and gross indecen......