Verdicts due in two life sentence appeals

Wednesday 29 July 2015

A murderer and a rapist serving life sentences for appalling crimes will both learn later today if their sentences are to be reduced.

Darren McCormick is appealing against his 25-year minimum sentence for an axe murder last year, while Ian Bartlett is appealing against his own minimum sentence for a series of rapes, indecent assaults and abuse of a child in what police have called “the worst campaign of sustained abuse against a single victim that the Island has ever seen”.

After the bomb threats over the last two days, McCormick will not be attending the appeal hearing where the result of his attempt to reduce the length of his minimum term will be heard.

His lawyer – Advocate Julian Gollop – has argued that his 25-year minimum sentence is unfair because the Royal Court put too much weight on a previous conviction.

McCormick was jailed in January for the murder of Colin Chevalier after the court heard that he had attacked him with an axe while he was sleeping, before cutting off one of his ears.

Advocate Gollop says that a previous conviction for grave and criminal assault – in which he attacked a sleeping man with a broken bottle – was given too much weight by the court.

That previous conviction was the justification for the court deciding on a 30-year starting point, rather than 15 years, which is mandatory in murder cases.

The other prisoner who will hear the result of his appeal today is Bartlett, the first person to be given a life sentence for any crime other than murder in Jersey.

At the time that he was sentenced, the court said that he would remain a danger to children.

Bailiff William Bailhache said during sentencing that: “There is evidence that he is likely, if at large, to remain a danger to adolescent and pre-pubescent girls for an indefinite time. In our view, the offending which we have set out in detail earlier in these reasons clearly established that the defendant has manifested perverted tendencies.

“This defendant has quite deliberately groomed a young girl over the period of the offences into deviant sexual practices. The evidence before us shows that she was not a willing victim, despite that grooming.”