The Court of Appeal changed two concurrent two-year sentences for assault into consecutive terms, after finding they did not reflect the gravity of the offending. The sentences relate to two assaults in County Cavan in October 2016 and remain backdated to the date the respondent entered custody.
The decision followed an application by the Director of Public Prosecutions to review the sentences as unduly lenient. The court said the offences were serious and that the respondent’s earlier convictions for similar assaults, together with his wider record, were significant aggravating factors.
The Circuit Court had sentenced the respondent on 18 July 2017 after formal pleas to two counts of assault causing harm under section 3 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act. It imposed two years on each count, to run concurrently, backdated to 31 October 2016. The Court of Appeal ordered the two-year terms to run consecutively, also from that date.
The court stressed that it was dealing only with the sentences for the two offences where pleas had been entered. Although the DPP argued that the Circuit Court should have activated an earlier suspended sentence, no formal application concerning activation had been made to the Court of Appeal. It said that issue was therefore not properly before it.
The earlier sentence arose from assaults on three women and included a suspended portion. The Court of Appeal described the decision not to activate it as surprising and extremely generous to the respondent. It said that generosity was relevant when assessing the new sentences, but did not make an order activating the suspended term.
The judgment also recorded that the Circuit Court had heard evidence about several other alleged assaults in 2016, beyond the two counts admitted by plea. The Court of Appeal expressed reservations about the procedure used to present those matters and noted uncertainty at the sentencing hearing over whether they should be formally discontinued or taken into consideration.
In deciding the review, the Court of Appeal said an aggregate sentence of five years would otherwise have been appropriate for the two offences. It took account of evidence that the respondent had undertaken a broad range of courses in custody, the impending release date, and delay in handling the review. It therefore made the two existing two-year terms consecutive rather than imposing the higher terms it had considered.