Convicted sex offender Christy Griffin has had his life sentence for rape of his partner’s teenage daughter reduced to 15 years.
The three judge Court of Criminal Appeal said today it would reduce the sentence because the trial judge Mr Justice Paul Carney had erred in how he dealt with Griffin’s criminal record when imposing sentence.
Lawyers for Griffin (42), Ridgewood Green, Swords, Dublin, had complained the trial judge had erred in treating Griffin’s past criminal record as “horrendous” and appearing to regard it as including “extraneous events” relating to “some form of feud” when imposing a life sentence on two counts of rape.
Mr Justice Nial Fennelly, presiding at the three-judge appeal court, said the trial judge had erred in how sentence was imposed and the appeal court would substitute the life sentence with a 15 year sentence.
A “very severe” sentence was warranted given the youth of the girl, the quasi-parental relationship between her and Griffin, the trauma suffered by her, the length of time over which the offences were carried out and Griffin’s failure to propose any programme of rehabilitation or express any remorse, Mr Justice Fennelly said.
In seeking leave to appeal the severity of the life sentence, Michael O’Higgins SC, for Griffin, said the trial judge had ordered the jury to ignore reports of events occurring outside the courtroom and had said such “so-called extraneous events” were not relevant but, at the sentence hearing, the trial judge said he did not consider them extraneous.
Giving the CCA’s judgment on Griffin’s appeal, Mr Justice Fennelly said “so-called extraneous events” could not be taken into account in imposing the sentence.
While evidence was given by gardai of serious criminal acts apparently in “some form of feud between criminal elements relating to the trial” of Griffin but no evidence was brought implicating Griffin, he said.
Griffin was jailed for life in April 2007 on one count of oral rape in 1998 when the girl was in her teens and another count of rape in 2001. he was also sentenced to five years on nine counts of sexual assault, to run concurrently.
The victim was the daughter of a woman whom Griffin had lived with at three different locations in Dublin. Now aged in her 20s, the victim consented to Griffin’s name being used by the media. She was aged eight and Griffin was aged 24 when the first sexual assault occurred in 1993.
After being forced to perform oral sex on Griffin when she was 13, the victim told her mother and grandmother about it. Her mother was upset but did not take any action about it. After being raped at age 16 in 2001, the young woman left home a few months later and made a complaint to gardaí in 2002.
After the jury delivered a guilty verdict in January 2007, Mr Justice Carney said the sentencing would take place at a later date but the jury could now hear what had been “excluded from them” until this date. Lawyers for Griffin questioned the purpose of that.
A Garda detective then gave evidence in the presence of the jury of Griffin’s previous convictions and said there had been a number of serious incidents between “the two families” since a previous trial, including incidents where shots were fired through the window of Griffin’s home, shots were fired into the homes of members of the victim’s family and hand grenades were thrown into Griffin’s home.
There was no evidence provided that Griffin was involved in or responsible for any of the events, other than as a victim of one shooting. The court heard Griffin had 18 previous convictions, many committed as a juvenile, and received a nine-year sentence for robbery and possession of a firearm in 1987.