Are we protecting society or just facilitating rapists and prosecutors?

MR JUSTICE Paul Carney’s annoyance at the Court of Criminal Appeal is understandable. In January 2007 he sentenced Gerard Kelly to life in prison for rape, but the sentence was for more than that crime.

Are we protecting society or just facilitating rapists and prosecutors?

Kelly had been convicted in Coventry of rape in 1987, for which he served eight years. He returned to Ireland in late summer of 1997 and raped a pregnant 17-year-old in Dun Laoghaire as she was walking home on November 2, 1997. He was convicted of that second rape on June 21, 1999 and sentenced to 10 years in jail.

In April 2004 — after less than five years — the Central Criminal Court suspended the remainder of his 10-year sentence. Even allowing for remission, he would not have been due for release until May 2005. Thus, he should still have been in prison on the night of September 17, 2004 when he raped again.

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