The man serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of Louth woman Jill Meagher in Australia has won an appeal against a separate rape conviction.
Adrian Bayley has had his non-parole sentence cut by three years after the Victorian Court of Appeal upheld his appeal against the rape of a woman in St Kilda in 2000.
Bayley, 44, was serving a life sentence for the 2012 rape and murder of Ms Meagher when he was convicted of three previous rapes.
The Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal against one of the rapes and the sentence for a second.
In relation to the third rape, the court heard the victim made a statement to police after she identified Bayley as her attacker when she was looking at a missing persons page on Facebook for Ms Meagher in 2012.
The Court ruled the victim's identification evidence should not have been allowed at the jury trial as she had recognised Bayley from a single photograph taken 12 years after she was raped.
It was also likely she already knew Bayley had been charged with the rape and murder of Ms Meagher, the court ruled.
The appeal judges found even less weight should have been given to the victim then identifying Bayley on a photo board made up by police after they informed her he had been charged with her rape.
But even if the identification evidence had been allowed at the trial, the court found a properly instructed jury would still not have been able to convict Bayley as the evidence was so weak.
His 43-year minimum jail term has been reduced to 40 years.
In re-sentencing Bayley, the judges said Bayley's offending had been utterly abhorrent and "left little optimism concerning his prospects for rehabilitation".
"Over many years, the applicant has shown a depraved predilection to attack, degrade and humiliate women," they said.
Bayley will now be eligible for parole in 2055 at the age of 83.
