The Court of Appeal has dismissed a sentence appeal by Archili Mindadze, upholding a three-and-a-half-year prison term with the final six months suspended for assault causing harm to a dentist in Dublin.
In an ex tempore judgment delivered on 27 October 2016, the court said the trial judge was justified in setting three and a half years as the starting point, given the background to the assault. It also found that the mitigation for Mindadze’s limited cooperation with gardaí and late guilty plea was adequate.
Mindadze had pleaded guilty on the day of trial to assault causing harm to Iurii Borta at his dental practice on Summerhill Parade on 1 November 2012. The Director of Public Prosecutions accepted the plea on the basis that two other counts would be taken into consideration: demanding money with menaces and producing an article capable of inflicting serious injury. The appeal judgment records those counts as matters taken into consideration; it does not describe separate convictions or sentences on them.
At the sentence hearing, Detective Garda Niamh Coates gave evidence that Mindadze and another man repeatedly asked Borta whom he paid protection money to. She said Mindadze produced a knife and attempted to stab him, cutting his finger, and punched him in the face and head. Borta’s sister entered the surgery and was terrified, the court heard. Coates’s evidence was that Mindadze told Borta he had ten days to leave the country and threatened that neither he nor his sister would be able to leave if police were told.
The judgment says Mindadze returned to the practice ten days later and was arrested. A blood-stained knife found at his home was identified as bearing Borta’s DNA. The sentencing judge had noted that Borta was frightened for his life and was out of work for two weeks.
Mindadze’s counsel argued that the trial judge had selected too high a starting sentence and had not allowed enough for mitigation. The prosecution stressed that the assault occurred in the context of attempted extortion. The Court of Appeal described the case as not an ordinary assault and said it had “sinister overtones”. It noted the use of a knife, the injured party’s terror, and the return to the practice after the threat. The court dismissed the appeal.