The Court of Appeal has denied child sex offender DeAnthony Russell the opportunity to appeal his three-year prison sentence.
Russell was convicted on 26 May 2022, of sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl in the kitchen of her family home.
In the transcript of the oral appeals court judgment, published this week, Justice Sir Alan Moses said the applicant gave “no good reason” for an appeal to proceed.
Russell had applied for permission to appeal following his sentence, but later wrote to the appeals court to withdraw his application.
On 11 Sept., he stood unrepresented before the judges and asked to continue with it.
Moses, in his judgment, said the request to renew the application was submitted “well out of time”.
He added that despite there being no grounds for renewing the application or of appeal, the judges carefully looked again at all the circumstances of the offence.
They also examined if there was “any possible reason as to why it… could be argued to be manifestly excessive”, Moses said in his judgment.
The judges said they had seen none, and dismissed the application.
Russell was found guilty of approaching a child from behind, touching and rubbing her bottom over her clothing with both hands.
The applicant then exposed himself and rubbed his own penis, Moses said as he described the incident in his judgment.
He said the presiding judge considered as mitigating factors the man’s mental disorder, the lack of previous convictions of a sexual nature and the “almost fleeting” nature of the offence.
This reduced what could have been a five-year jail term to three years.
Related Videos
