The Court of Appeal has dismissed Bill Kenneally’s appeal against the severity of a cumulative 14-year-and-two-month prison sentence for indecent assaults on 10 complainants who were teenage boys at the time of the offences.
The sentence, imposed on 19 February 2016, comprised 10 individual terms of 17 months, each ordered to run consecutively. The offences related to conduct between January 1984 and December 1987. The judgment was delivered on 22 February 2018 by Mr Justice Birmingham, with Mr Justice Mahon and Mr Justice Edwards also listed.
Kenneally argued that the sentence was grossly excessive and disproportionate, and that the sentencing judge had given too little weight to mitigating circumstances. The Director of Public Prosecutions accepted that the sentence was very lengthy, but argued that the offending was exceptionally serious in scale and nature.
The Court of Appeal described repeated abuse, grooming and the use of money, gifts, alcohol and photographs to control complainants. It also noted the appellant’s guilty pleas, admissions, withdrawal from sporting activities after allegations emerged in 1987, engagement with a psychiatrist, lack of previous convictions and age at sentencing. The court said these mitigating factors were significant, but the case still required a very substantial sentence.
The appeal court considered the Circuit Court judge’s approach, including the judge’s belief that the maximum sentence for each individual offence was two years. That understanding, the appeal court said, reflected legal uncertainty later clarified by the Supreme Court in DPP v James Maher [2016] IESC 31. The appeal court did not find error in the judge’s two-year starting point for each complainant, the seven-month reduction for mitigation, or the decision to impose consecutive terms.
It said the sentencing judge should also have stepped back to assess the overall term under the totality principle. The appeal court undertook that assessment and concluded that, although the sentence was severe and at the upper end of the available range, it was not so severe as to amount to an error in principle. It dismissed the appeal. The sentence therefore remained in place.