Several offenders are behind bars this week after appearing before the courts this week.

York Press:

Paedophile Nathan McCracken was before York Crown Court for the second time in two years.

This week he was sentenced for sexually assaulting a girl he didn't know on a country road.

He saw her taking a summer evening walk, stopped his car next to her and told her he hadn't had sex for months.

Then despite all she could do, he sexually assaulted her.

Last year, the 27-year-old from Commercial Street, Norton, was jailed for attempting to incite a child to commit a sexual act.

This year he was jailed for a further 16 months and given a lifetime ban on approaching any lone woman or girl among other restrictions.

York Press:

Albert Stoian, 35, and Romica Stoica, 41, targeted a 94-year-old man in York.

They walked up to him in broad daylight and snatched his wallet.

The two Romanians had travelled to York specifically to find someone to mug, York Crown Court heard.

Stoian, 35, of Middlesbrough, was jailed for 18 months.

Stoica, 41, of Hull, was jailed for 10 months. Both admitted theft.

The Home Secretary will now decide whether either or both will be deported at the end of their sentence.

York Press:

York man David Roustoby, 45, spent part of the week trying to convince a jury in Leeds that he had been lying when he had confessed to murdering David Clarke, 43, in 2007, to two friends.

But he had included details that he could only have known about Mr Clarke's death if he had been involved in it.

The jury convicted him unanimously of murder.

He will be sentenced on Monday alongside the woman who helped him take Mr Clarke's body to the River Foss near Towthorpe, Sharron Roustoby, 50, also of York.

Unknown to the jury she had admitted assisting an offender earlier this autumn.

Both have been remanded in custody since their arrests last Spring.

The High Court judge who will sentence them made a brief visit to York Crown Court during the trial.

Mr Justice Goss read the Letters Patent in front of leading civic figures in the traditional ceremony to mark the start of the legal year.

The other York legal tradition for October didn't take place because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

There was no parade of judges and lawyers in full formal robes from the Assembly Rooms to York Minister for the Legal Service.