The Court of Appeal has restructured Scott Donegan’s prison sentence for the false imprisonment of a former partner and an earlier threat to kill a security installer in Miltown Malbay, while rejecting the DPP’s argument that the overall punishment was unduly lenient.
Donegan had received a cumulative sentence of 103 months, with the final nine months suspended, at Ennis Circuit Criminal Court in September 2023.
The earlier offence arose in April 2021 when William Martin was installing CCTV at a neighbouring house in Miltown Malbay. Donegan verbally abused him and threatened to stab him to death. He later pleaded guilty on the morning his trial was due to begin.
While on bail for that offence, Donegan falsely imprisoned a woman identified as Ms R at his home on November 9, 2022. The court heard that she was prevented from leaving for more than four hours. Donegan took her phone, threatened her with a large kitchen knife, stabbed a mantelpiece with it and grabbed her by the throat. He had signed guilty pleas to false imprisonment and producing the knife at an early stage.
The Court of Appeal upheld the sentencing judge’s assessment of the seriousness of the offences. It also found that a 10-year-and-five-month headline sentence for the false imprisonment was within the proper range, given Donegan’s previous convictions for violence against former partners and the fact that the offence was committed while on bail.
The legal problem concerned sequencing. Section 11 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984 required the later offences, committed while Donegan was on bail, to run consecutively to the sentence for the earlier threat. The Circuit Court had ordered them in the opposite sequence.
The appeal court said that mistake did not make the overall 94-month effective term unduly lenient. It nevertheless quashed the sentence to correct the structure.
Donegan was resentenced to 20 months for the threat, followed by 83 months for false imprisonment, with 25 months for producing the knife concurrent with that term. The final nine months of the 83-month sentence were suspended for three years, leaving an effective 94 months to serve, subject to compliance with the suspension conditions.