The Court of Criminal Appeal reduced a man’s sentences for obtaining €700 by deception and possessing child pornography, ruling that the terms imposed at trial were excessive. It cut the sentence for deception from two years, with six months suspended, to six months in prison, and the sentence for possession from five years, with two years suspended, to one year.
The court gave its reasons on 10 March 2006, after announcing the reductions at a hearing on 10 February. It treated the application for leave to appeal as the hearing of the appeal. The judgment said the applicant had already spent more than a year in prison. The court stressed that its decision did not mean he should necessarily have received an immediate prison sentence in the first place.
The applicant had pleaded guilty to inducing a woman to pay him €700 for kitchen work by using a false name and a false business address. He also pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography found after gardaí searched his home in September 2003 under a warrant obtained during their investigation of the deception. Forensic examination of seized computer materials found 175 images of child pornography among a much larger collection of adult pornography. The court said there was no evidence that he shared or distributed the material, or that his possession was connected to another sexual offence.
In reviewing the possession sentence, the court considered the number and nature of the images, the period and circumstances of the offending, and the applicant’s responsibility and previous record. It said the evidence indicated that he accessed the sites on up to 15 occasions over a comparatively short period, stopped, and left the material unused. The judgment also noted his guilty plea, assistance to gardaí, old previous convictions, remorse and the role alcohol had played in his offending. The evidence did not describe the images in sufficient detail for a full assessment of their seriousness.
The court said the five-year term wrongly placed the possession offence at the highest level of seriousness and failed to give adequate weight to mitigation. It noted that the law distinguishes possession from offences involving production or distribution, and sets no minimum sentence for possession.
On the deception count, the court accepted the submission that the case would have been tried summarily had it not been linked to the possession charge. It also noted the absence of a dishonesty conviction for more than 20 years. The judgment said the applicant would be placed on the sex offenders register.