The Court of Criminal Appeal has reduced the sentences imposed on five applicants convicted of violent disorder from six years to four and a half years, finding a substantial and unjustified disparity with the sentences given to two co-accused who pleaded guilty to the same offence.
In a judgment delivered on 3 April 2006, the court rejected the applications for leave to appeal against conviction. It dismissed arguments concerning the joint trial, the jury remaining after other defendants pleaded guilty, prosecution commentary on video evidence, and the trial judge’s direction on self-defence. The court found no basis on those grounds to conclude that the trial was unfair.
The convictions followed a 13-day trial in the Circuit Criminal Court in Limerick. The five applicants were found guilty on 2 June 2004 and sentenced on 29 June 2004. The charges arose from a confrontation in a restaurant car park on Ennis Road, Limerick City, on 27 May 2003. The judgment records that a man who arrived in a van required 16 staples for head wounds.
The sentence appeal argued that six years was too harsh and disproportionate, including when compared with co-accused who received three years after pleading guilty to violent disorder. The applicants also argued that the trial judge had given undue weight to an alleged feud in Limerick. The appeal court said a defendant could not be sentenced for events outside the charges and evidence, such as starting or continuing a feud. It also said, however, that the trial judge was entitled to consider the background and context in which the charged events occurred.
The court did not find that the trial judge had relied on factors he was not entitled to consider, or that he had found the applicants more blameworthy than the other group. It found the two co-accused’s guilty pleas and personal circumstances relevant to their lower sentences. But it concluded that even allowing for those mitigating factors, the six-year terms were disproportionately high compared with the three-year sentences, and that the gap lacked justifiable differentiating factors.
The court set aside the five sentences and determined that four and a half years was appropriate for applicants who had not pleaded guilty. It said it would hear counsel on any consequential orders for the individual applicants. The judgment does not record those further orders.