Chloe Bates resentenced to eight months for careless driving

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

The Court of Appeal allowed Chloe Bates’s sentence appeal on 24 July 2020 and resentenced her to eight months in prison for careless driving causing serious bodily harm. The sentence was to run from 18 June 2020, the date of her original sentencing.

Bates entered a guilty plea on 10 March 2020. On 18 June 2020, Wexford Circuit Court sentenced her to 12 months in prison for careless driving causing serious bodily harm and a concurrent four months for failing to stop a vehicle at the occurrence of an accident.

The case concerned a collision on 28 May 2018 at Millands, Gorey, where Bates’s car struck Pamela Levingston as she walked her two dogs. Levingston was thrown into a ditch and suffered serious injuries, including a heart injury requiring stenting. She spent about five months in hospital.

The judgment said Bates told a colleague that her vehicle had struck a wall or post, and that she had reversed but could see nobody or nothing before driving home. She later went with her mother to Gorey Garda Station and made her car available for examination. The court said there was significant cooperation, but that it was far from total.

Bates argued that insufficient weight had been given to mitigation, including her youth, previous good character, cooperation and guilty plea. The Court of Appeal found that the 18-month headline sentence was appropriate, but that the mitigating factors required a greater reduction. The judgment was delivered by Birmingham P.