A man who was jailed after subjecting a vulnerable woman to an horrific torture ordeal with a lit cigarette had his prison term cut.
Clyde Handley Wallace (54) was sentenced at Leicester Crown Court in January after he was convicted of false imprisonment and two assaults occasioning actual bodily harm.
He appealed and, despite seeing his convictions upheld by three senior judges, won a one-year reduction in his "manifestly excessive" six-year term.
The court heard the woman had 107 scars on her face, hands, arms, thighs and calves, which she said he had caused with a cigarette.
She said Wallace, of Cromford Street, Spinney Hills, Leicester, and an unnamed friend had held her down in December, 2010 and repeatedly burned her with lit cigarettes. A month later, he had attacked her again, she said, punching her in the face and hitting her on the head with a mug.
Within weeks of that incident, they had argued in the hotel where she lived and Wallace had refused to let her leave the room for 15 minutes, constituting false imprisonment.
Wallace claimed the allegations were all "fantasy". She had previously made up a story of an attack by him and its resulting injury, which had actually been caused by dental work, he said.
During the appeal, his lawyers argued the trial judge did not adequately sum up the evidence to the jury, meaning the convictions were "unsafe".
Rejecting the arguments, Lord Justice Richards, sitting with Mr Justice Sweeney and Mr Justice Stuart-Smith, said the judges had read the trial papers.
"The summing up dealt adequately with the evidence and the defence case and did not give rise to any unfairness to the appellant," he told the court.
But he said the two-year portion of the sentence imposed for the attack with the mug was too long and would be cut to one year, making a new total of five years.
