The sentence of a person who was spared jail after being convicted of raping a 13-year-old lady is to be appealed, Scotland’s Crown Office has introduced.
Sean Hogg was 17 when he attacked the schoolgirl at Dalkeith Country Park in Midlothian on varied events between March and June 2018.
At the High Court in Glasgow earlier this month, Hogg, now 21, was handed a group payback order with 270 hours of unpaid work.
Hogg, of Hamilton in South Lanarkshire, was additionally added to the intercourse offenders’ register and positioned beneath supervision for 3 years after being discovered responsible by a jury.
Judge Lord Lake stated he had thought-about the rules for sentencing under-25s and concluded that imprisonment wouldn’t contribute to his rehabilitation.
Scotland’s Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain KC, has now determined that the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) ought to attraction the sentence on the grounds it was “unduly lenient”.
Kenny Donnelly, deputy crown agent for COPFS, stated: “Sentence is quite rightly the domain of the independent judiciary. However, the law provides for some limited circumstances in which prosecutors have the right to appeal against sentences.
“The Appeal Court has set a excessive take a look at to be glad for this to occur. The sentence should be unduly lenient, which implies that it should be outwith the vary of sentences which the sentencing decide, taking account of all related elements, may fairly have imposed.
“The question of Crown appeal against sentence in this case has been carefully considered, and the decision to place this matter before the Appeal Court has been communicated to the complainer through her representative.”
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New tips for sentencing under-25s got here into impact in Scotland in January 2022.
The Scottish Sentencing Council beneficial a extra “individualistic approach” to take account of the perpetrator’s life experiences.
The modifications had been made to assist scale back reoffending by specializing in rehabilitation reasonably than punishment.
Rape Crisis Scotland branded Hogg’s sentence “worryingly lenient”.
Sandy Brindley, chief govt of Rape Crisis Scotland, stated on the time: “This is an extremely serious case and we are shocked this perpetrator has not received a custodial sentence.
“Given the gravity of this crime and the very fact it was tried on the High Court, this sentence seems to us to be worryingly lenient.”
Source: information.sky.com”
