The Victorian Court of Appeal on Tuesday knocked three years off Adrian Earnest Bayley’s 43-year minimum sentence after accepting Bayley’s claim that there were significant issues with the evidence provided by a woman he was accused of raping in St Kilda 16 years ago.
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The 44-year-old’s non-parole period has been reduced from 43 years to 40 years.
He appealed against two of the three convictions and today, part of his appeal was upheld, with the court quashing one of the rape convictions.
The appeal related to a sexual assault charge in 2000, with the victim identifying Bayley 12 years later after seeing a photo on Facebook while looking at a missing persons page for Jill Meagher.
The former pastry chef was already facing life behind bars with a non-parole period of 35 years for the rape and murder of Ms Meagher in September 2013.
Adrian Bayley has had three years shaved off his minimum term.
According to Bayley’s barrister Saul Holt QC said, the second conviction, involving the rape of a Dutch backpacker in 2012, rested on a combination of similarity and opportunity evidence, which reportedly raised a “red flag” about the crown case.
Bayley’s appeal against the 2012 conviction was dismissed after the court said telephone evidence used at trial was “clearly relevant” and the jury could have found him guilty using at least five other pieces of evidence.
The Court of Appeal found the identification evidence should have been excluded because of the risk of unfair prejudice.
In re-sentencing Bayley, the Court of Appeal judges acknowledged his offending had been utterly abhorrent and “left little optimism concerning his prospects for rehabilitation”.
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Bayley later appealed against Justice Nettle’s sentence, but that was dismissed.
