The Court of Appeal found that a sentence imposed on Robert Moran for burglary and robbery offences was unduly lenient, concluding that the sentencing judge had given insufficient weight to aggravating factors. The available judgment excerpt does not state whether the court quashed or replaced the sentence, or refused the application.
The Director of Public Prosecutions sought a review under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993. In May 2011, Moran received a total sentence of five years’ imprisonment, with the final two years suspended for five years. The sentences ran concurrently, including with a three-year sentence for a June 2010 robbery. A February 2009 robbery was taken into consideration, and no order was made on an assault-causing-harm count related to the June 2010 robbery.
The offences included an armed robbery of a petrol station in Limerick in January 2010, during which a staff member suffered a significant cut to his neck, and three aggravated burglaries in May and June 2010. In the first burglary, Moran entered a man’s home with a knife and stole €1,500. During a later burglary, the resident escaped; in the third, intruders punched him and stole €150 and his house keys. The judgment says the resident, who had a mental disability, later left the home because he felt unsafe and was rehoused by the Society of St Vincent de Paul.
The DPP argued that the sentence failed to reflect the seriousness of the offences, their impact on the injured party, Moran’s previous convictions and offending while on bail. It also challenged the decision to take the 2009 robbery into consideration rather than impose a separate sentence. Moran’s counsel pointed to his guilty pleas, cooperation, drug addiction and subsequent engagement with rehabilitation. The court said a separate 2014 sentence was not under review, but accepted that the reported rehabilitation was relevant to the sentencing approach.
The Court of Appeal set out the demanding test for an undue-leniency review: the DPP had to show a substantial or gross departure from an appropriate sentence, amounting to an error of principle. It noted that the sentencing judge had considered proportionality and rehabilitation, but held that the judge gave insufficient weight to the many aggravating factors. The court therefore found the sentence a substantial departure from what was appropriate. The supplied excerpt ends at that conclusion and does not include the operative order.