SENTENCING STATEMENTS

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HMA v Garry John Martin

Dec 21, 2021

At Glasgow High Court, Lord Arthurson imposed an extended sentence of 14 years and a determinate sentence of four years imprisonment on Garry John Martin, after the offender was found guilty of 19 charges involving violent and sexual offending against nine complainers spanning almost three decades. The sentences will run consecutively.

On Sentencing, Lord Arthurson made the following statement in court:

Garry John Martin, on 22 November 2021 at Edinburgh High Court you were convicted by a jury on indictment of nineteen separate charges. In addition to two charges of animal cruelty, you were convicted of nine charges of assault, assault to injury and abduction and assault; one charge of using lewd, indecent and libidinous practices and behaviour contrary to section 6 of the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995; two charges of indecent assault; three charges of rape; and one charge of rape to injury. Your offending has spanned almost thirty years and the present indictment encompasses nine complainers, your victims including children and adult females.

You are presently aged 51 and have accrued to date seventeen groups of convictions, one for violence at indictment level in 2016 and three for domestically aggravated offending in 2009, 2014 and 2015. The author of the criminal justice social work report and risk assessment has described your offending as being of a particularly vicious and callous nature, in which you have displayed a willingness to abuse and exploit anyone within your personal circle causing extensive and lifelong harm of the most serious kind.

You have exhibited, it is reported by the author, a significant lack of empathy for others, albeit you have displayed some insight into the violent offending of which you have been convicted. The author of the report has further described the index offending in your case as among the most serious ever seen by him in the course of his social work career. He has recommended, due to his assessment of the risk presented by you to intimate partners and children, the imposition of an extended sentence and further asked that consideration be given by the Court to an order for lifelong restriction.

I have listened with care to the submissions advanced on your behalf this morning in mitigation by your senior counsel and propose to take into account all of the substantive points so helpfully articulated by him in the course of his submission. In particular, I note what he has said concerning your own childhood and indeed your positive employment history, together with his confirmation that you undertook an alcohol awareness course during a probation order imposed following a conviction in 2010. I also take into account that you have not previously served a custodial sentence, notwithstanding the post-indictment convictions on your record, and finally that the last offending libelled on the indictment dates back to 2014.

In the whole circumstances of your case, I have concluded that the only appropriate disposal on this indictment, involving as it does a course of violent offending by you spanning almost three decades and a course of quite appalling sexual offending against three of your victims, the offending against one of these commencing when she was only thirteen years old, requires on any view to be a very considerable one.

Further, on the basis of the evidence led at your trial, the terms of the risk assessment material now available to the Court and, to a lesser but nonetheless relevant extent, your criminal antecedents, I have in addition concluded that you present a high risk of serious harm from which it is necessary to protect the public, and that the normal period of licence would not be sufficient to provide the protection required in respect of the risk which you would present on your release from the custodial part of any sentence imposed upon you. I have reached the view that your case has not reached that threshold of gravity as to justify in the whole circumstances the making today of a Risk Assessment Order, notwithstanding the suggestion to that effect in the criminal justice social work report and risk assessment.

Instead, I accordingly propose selecting by way of disposal for the sexual offending on this indictment an extended sentence. This extended sentence will be imposed consecutively to the determinate sentence which you will receive in respect of your offending for the crimes of violence libelled on this indictment. The extended sentence will be in two parts. The first part will be custodial, namely a period of imprisonment. This will be followed by an extension period in the community, when you will be on licence and under supervision. The conditions of your licence will be fixed by Scottish Ministers. If during the extension period you fail to comply with the conditions of your licence, it may be revoked and you may be returned to custody for a further period in respect of this indictment.

The Court also has power to deal with you if you commit another offence after your release and while you are on licence. It is to be hoped that this extension period will contribute significantly towards your re-integration into the community in due course. It is plain from the terms of the risk assessment material before the Court that in your case the extension period will require to be a lengthy one.

The sentencing purposes of the disposals which I am about to impose are therefore respectively punishment, a reflection of social revulsion towards your crimes, deterrence and rehabilitation, and in the selection of the in cumulo custodial tariffs contained in these disposals I have additionally sought to take into account the important sentencing principle of totality.

You will therefore serve in respect of this indictment first, in respect of charges 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 21, 22 and 23, on an in cumulo basis, a period of imprisonment of four years. That determinate sentence will be backdated to 22 November 2021, being the date of your conviction and initial remand in custody in this case. Consecutive to that sentence you will serve, in respect of charges 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19 and 20, again on an in cumulo basis, an extended sentence of fourteen years duration, with a custodial term of nine years and thereafter an extension period of five years. For the avoidance of doubt, in the whole circumstances I have decided to make no order in respect of charges 10 and 17.

Finally, as a result of this disposal, you will now become subject to the notification requirements of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 for an indefinite period.

21 December 2021