Child rapist's appeal thrown out by the court

Anthony Pandolfino, 73, will be going to jail after the superior courts threw out his appeal not to go to prison after he was found guilty of possessing child pornography.

A convicted child rapist, Pandolfino was contesting the five-year jail term handed down by the magistrates court in March last year.

Pandolfino had been jailed for five years and fined €3,000 in March 2017 after terabytes of indecent and pornographic images of children were found on his hard drive.

Prior to that, he had been jailed for 10 years in 2006 for raping, together with his brother, two boys aged 10 and 11.

In his appeal application, the appellant’s lawyer, Roberto Montalto, had argued that there were procedural defects in the man’s conviction and that the punishment meted out did not take into account his advanced age.

The court observed that in cases heard by magistrates, where the accused pleads guilty before the Attorney General is consulted on whether proceedings are to be summary or not, the court can proceed to pass judgment if the punishment is not higher than 12 years imprisonment.

The principal complaint was that the man’s early admission had not been taken into consideration by the first court and nor had it borne in mind the man’s age and his health.

But Judge Giovanni Grixti noted that early admission did not automatically translate into a reduction in sentence, observing that the first court had taken this into consideration anyway. Pandolfino had not been handed down the maximum punishment.

The court also noted that the age of the accused had no part in the calculation of punishment and therefore the court said it saw no reason to disturb the discretion used by the first court.