The Court of Appeal has dismissed Patrick Joseph O’Reilly’s appeal against the severity of sentences imposed for three threats to kill and two assault charges, finding the sentencing judge applied the principle of totality correctly and imposed a proportionate sentence.
The appeal concerned sentences imposed after O’Reilly pleaded guilty. For the threat relating to Inspector Hunt, he received five years’ imprisonment. He received two years for the first threat to Garda Donoghue and three years for the second. The Donoghue sentences ran concurrently with each other but consecutively to the five-year term. The final three years of the overall sentence were suspended, subject to conditions including good behaviour, keeping the peace, avoiding alcohol and engaging with addiction services for three years after release. The sentences were backdated to 3 February 2017. An assault involving a graze to Donoghue’s face was taken into consideration.
The judgment recounts that the Hunt threat was made while gardaí searched a hotel room where O’Reilly was staying. It referred to where Hunt lived and walked his dog. Later that day, after O’Reilly alighted from a car stopped by gardaí and a struggle followed, he threatened Donoghue with a bullet. He repeated the threat while in a cell at Cahir Garda Station. O’Reilly said he had been intoxicated and could not remember making the first threat; the judgment says Hunt did not accept that account.
O’Reilly argued that the sentences were unduly harsh. He submitted that the incidents happened within hours on the same day and that consecutive sentences offended totality. He also challenged the absence of headline sentences and argued that mitigating factors had not been properly reflected in the terms imposed. The Director of Public Prosecutions opposed the appeal, arguing the Hunt threat was considered and sinister, and pointing to its impact, the circumstances of the threats and O’Reilly’s previous convictions.
The Court of Appeal said the lack of a stated headline sentence was not fundamentally important. It agreed with the sentencing judge’s categorisation of the Hunt offence as in the top range and the Donoghue offences at the very top of the middle range. The court identified aggravating factors including the threats’ repeated and considered nature, their references to personal details, the victims’ roles, prior convictions and the impact on the victims and their families. It described the mitigating factors as very limited: guilty pleas and apologies.
The court concluded that all relevant factors had been considered, totality had been correctly applied and there was no error in principle. It dismissed the appeal; the sentences remained in place.