A man who raped his two victims on multiple occasions has had his prison sentence increased following a successful appeal by the Crown.
Connor McNealis was locked up for six years in April 2024 after being found guilty following a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh.
He had raped two women over the course of five years with the first victim targeted on two occasions in 2016 and the second victim multiple times between 2020 and 2021.
The 27-year-old was just 19 at the time of his first attack. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service appealed to the court to consider imposing a longer jail term due to the serious nature of the offences.
The appeal court upheld the Crown’s appeal and the original sentence was quashed and replaced with a nine-year custodial term.
The appeal court has a high threshold for appeals from the Crown and it’s only allowed in limited circumstances.
Read More:
-
'Despicable' pair jailed after stealing more than £200k from vulnerable victims
-
Youth football coach jailed over rape and sexual assault of teenage girl
-
Man who raped teenager after forcing her to take 'powdered substance' jailed
The sentence must be unduly lenient, meaning it falls outside the range of sentences the judge could have reasonably considered appropriate having taken account of all relevant factors.
Kenny Donnelly, Deputy Crown Agent for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, said: “COPFS is committed to improving the criminal justice journey for victims, from the stage of reporting all the way through to sentencing.
“Prosecutors have a responsibility in legislation to consider appeals based upon undue leniency in sentencing.
"Such appeals are rare but important to ensure the public interest is properly served.
"They allow the court to review sentences that the Crown believe fall outside the range of punishment reasonably considered appropriate.
"COPFS believes that it is important that the harm caused by sexual offending, and the culpability of the convicted person, must be consistently reflected in sentencing decisions.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article