‘Beast’ appeals sex convictions

Serial sex offender Stewart Murray Wilson has appealed against his latest convictions and sentence.

Wilson, 72, was sentenced in late 2018 to two years and four months’ jail for historic offences against three victims.

A jury at the High Court in Auckland had found him guilty on four counts of rape, three of doing an indecent act on a girl, one of attempted rape, burglary, indecent assault, and threatening to kill, relating to two adult women and a nine-year-old girl between 1971 and 1980.

His lawyer, Andrew McKenzie, said at the Court of Appeal yesterday that the complaints against Wilson from the two women had been recorded by police before Wilson was sentenced in 1996 for a raft of other offences. In 2000, other charges against Wilson were stopped and so should have the charges from the two women.

In relation to one of the women – who has since died – there were fundamental errors in her identification of Wilson, getting the wrong house, wrong wife’s name and wrong occupation, McKenzie said.

Another ground of appeal was based on a charge of rape being reduced during the trial to an attempted rape. It unfairly deprived Wilson of his intended defence that there was no penetration, he said.

The sentence appeal was that if Wilson had been sentenced in 1996 for the most recent convictions Wilson would not have got a longer sentence than the 21 years he received, McKenzie said.

Another ground of the sentence appeal was that Wilson should have been discharged because in relation to one of the women the prosecution had waited 40 years to charge him.

Crown lawyer Mark Lillico said the issue about delay was whether Wilson could still get a fair trial, and the Crown said that he could.

The challenge to one of the women’s identification of Wilson was before the jury and it accepted her identification.

The change of the charge from rape to attempted rape was ‘‘always on the cards’’ and was not unfair to Wilson, Lillico said.

Lillico supported the sentence on the basis the 21-year sentence would have been even higher in 1996 if the most recent convictions had been included.

The Court of Appeal reserved its decision.