The Court of Appeal has increased Alan Curtis’s sentence for an assault that left a 16-year-old with a depressed skull fracture requiring emergency surgery.
In an ex tempore judgment delivered on 11 October 2019, the court allowed the Director of Public Prosecutions’ application to review the sentence for undue leniency. The original sentence, imposed after a contested trial on 15 November 2018, was four years’ imprisonment, with the final two years suspended.
A jury had found Curtis guilty of an offence under section 4 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997. The case concerned events on 28 March 2014 at Cashel Road, Crumlin, where a group of young people were gathered near the home of Curtis’s mother. The court said Curtis came out carrying a hurley and struck the injured party, identified in the judgment as Mr McClelland. The youth suffered a depressed skull fracture.
At trial, Curtis relied on self-defence. He said he had seen McClelland damaging his car with a plank and feared for his own safety and that of his mother and sister. Curtis accepted that he followed McClelland for some distance. The Court of Appeal said the jury must have rejected the claim that the force was justified and any reasonable doubt that Curtis believed he was entitled to use it. The court said any provocation was a minor mitigating factor and did not alter the jury’s verdict.
The court noted that McClelland had suffered significant permanent effects, including problems with speech, personality and concentration. It also considered Curtis’s family circumstances, work history and previous convictions, including convictions for offences under sections 3 and 4 of the same Act.
The appeal court said the sentencing judge had erred in principle by failing to give due weight to the offence’s gravity. It assessed the appropriate headline sentence as five to six years, then limited its intervention in light of mitigating factors and the fact that it was increasing the sentence.
The court quashed the original sentence and substituted five years’ imprisonment, suspending the final 12 months. To receive the suspension, Curtis must enter a bond and comply with probation service directions for one year after release. The judgment does not state the release date.