The Court of Appeal has replaced a fully suspended sentence imposed on Stephen Connor with two and a half years’ imprisonment, suspending the final year, after finding that the original sentence for a violent attack involving a knife was unduly lenient.
The ruling, delivered on 28 September 2020, followed an application by the Director of Public Prosecutions under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993 to review the sentence. Connor had pleaded guilty in July 2019 to assault causing harm, false imprisonment and producing a knife in the course of a dispute. A threat-to-kill-or-cause-serious-harm count was taken into consideration.
The offences arose from an attack at a house in Letterkenny, County Donegal. The injured party, Bríd Pierce, told gardaí that Connor, her former partner and then housemate, forced his way in after she had asked him to leave. The judgment recounts that he threatened her with a knife, held and struck her, and caused injuries that required stitches. Connor accepted several allegations in interview, including punching her, but said he could not remember much of the incident. The account of the attack was before the court as part of the case on which he pleaded guilty.
The sentencing judge imposed a two-and-a-half-year term for assault causing harm, with shorter terms for false imprisonment and producing a knife. The terms were wholly suspended for two and a half years, subject to a €100 bond, good behaviour, abstaining from alcohol and continuing addiction counselling.
The DPP argued on appeal that the judge had given excessive weight to mitigation and had failed to reflect the offences’ seriousness and the need for general deterrence. Connor argued that the sentence was within the judge’s discretion, pointing to his early guilty plea, cooperation, remorse, rehabilitation efforts and favourable probation and psychological reports.
The Court of Appeal said offences of this nature would normally attract a custodial element, with fully suspended sentences reserved for exceptional cases. It accepted there was substantial mitigation but concluded that it did not reach the level of exceptionality required, particularly given the knife and false-imprisonment aspects of the attack. The court held that the original sentence crossed the line from lenient to unduly lenient.
The court said a fully custodial two-and-a-half-year term would have been appropriate at first instance. Taking account of the fact Connor would enter prison for the first time following the appeal, it instead imposed two and a half years’ imprisonment with the final year suspended. The judgment does not specify further conditions for the suspended year.