The Court of Appeal has quashed sentences it found unduly lenient for a teenager who acted as a lookout during two armed robberies of bookmakers in Drogheda. It resentenced him to four years’ imprisonment on each count, with the final 15 months of each sentence suspended.
The court said the sentences would run on the usual conditions and required the respondent to remain under Probation Services supervision for two years. He was also to enter a €200 bond before the prison governor. The court granted both parties liberty to apply if difficulties arose regarding the bond.
The robberies took place about ten minutes apart on 4 November 2016. At Tully’s Bookmakers in Wheaton Hall, three masked men entered. One carried a starter pistol, fired it into the air, threatened an employee and struck him twice. About €1,600 was taken, and the raiders removed the CCTV hard drive. At a second Tully’s premises in Ballsgrove, the men took €1,735 and tried to interfere with CCTV footage.
The respondent was arrested in September 2017. He initially denied involvement but later admitted participating, including driving the getaway car and receiving instructions. He pleaded guilty and surrendered bail before sentencing. He had been five days short of his 17th birthday when the robberies occurred and had 42 previous convictions, including for burglary and theft.
In June 2019, the sentencing judge imposed three years on each count, with the final 18 months suspended, and directed that the sentences run concurrently. The Director of Public Prosecutions appealed, arguing that the sentences were unduly lenient, among other grounds.
The Court of Appeal said it would intervene only where a sentence substantially departed from the appropriate range. It found that the robberies were serious, planned operations involving assigned roles, a weapon, a getaway vehicle and attempts to erase CCTV footage. It said the original headline sentences were “extremely lenient” and the appropriate range was six to ten years.
The court also recognised the respondent’s youth, guilty pleas, cooperation, remorse and engagement with probation as mitigating factors. It concluded that the overall reduction for mitigation had been too great, and quashed the original sentences. In resentencing, it said headline sentences of about six and a half to seven years would have been appropriate, but reduced each to four years in light of the mitigating circumstances and the difficulty of significantly increasing the term shortly before his expected release.