Evil rapist faces review of ‘lenient’ prison term
NOTORIOUS rapist Joseph McCann is due to find out whether he will spend the rest of his life in prison.
The Attorney General’s Office referred the 30-year-old minimum jail-terms handed to McCann and also the UK’s most prolific serial rapist Reynhard Sinaga to the Court of Appeal as ‘unduly lenient’.
Senior judges were due to decide on Wednesday whether to give the pair whole life terms at a hearing in London.
McCann, 35, was given 33 life sentences at the Old Bailey in December for sex attacks on 11 women and children during a 15-day cocaine and vodka-fuelled rampage.
He abducted, raped and sexually assaulted victims in Haslingden, Ramsbottom and Greater Manchester, as well as in Watford and also London.
He was found guilty in December of 37 charges relating to 11 victims, aged between 11 and 71, and was described by the sentencing judge, Mr Justice Edis, as a ‘classic psychopath’.
Indonesian student Sinaga, 37, was sentenced to life in prison at Manchester Crown Court in January for a total of 159 offences, including 136 counts of rape, committed against 48 men.
At the hearing, solicitor general Michael Ellis QC will argue that McCann and Sinaga should both have been given a whole life tariff for their crimes, describing them as ‘some of the worst and most violent that this country has ever witnessed’.
The hearing, which will test whether a whole life order can be imposed in non-homicide cases, will also be the first time two separate offenders’ sentences have been challenged together as being unduly lenient.
Five senior judges - including the Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett and the President of the Queen’s Bench Division, Dame Victoria Sharp - are expected to hear the case over two days.