The Court of Appeal has doubled Johnny McDonagh’s wholly suspended sentence from three years to six years over violent disorder and related offences arising from a family-feud incident in Ballyhaunis.
The offences occurred on May 16, 2016, when members of the same extended family had gathered for their grandfather’s funeral. McDonagh and his co-accused were living in the Letterkenny area of Co Donegal. The injured parties, who were their cousins, had travelled from England.
McDonagh was convicted after a contested trial of violent disorder, assault causing harm and producing an article during a dispute. The article was described as a machete or bill hook. The Court of Appeal recorded that McDonagh struck an injured party with the weapon, although it also accepted that the violence was a joint enterprise involving others.
He was convicted in June 2017 and initially remanded in custody. He was released on bail in October 2017. His sentencing was eventually completed in Castlebar Circuit Court on February 14, 2019.
The trial judge imposed three years' imprisonment, fully suspended. A central issue on appeal was how that sentence compared with the six-year fully suspended sentence previously imposed on McDonagh’s brother Martin, who had also gone to trial.
The Court of Appeal found that the sentencing judge had wanted to treat the two brothers alike but mistakenly remembered Martin’s sentence as three years suspended rather than six.
The DPP argued that Johnny McDonagh’s sentence was unduly lenient. Although the prosecution accepted that immediate imprisonment was unlikely after an earlier Court of Appeal decision had left Martin’s suspended sentence intact, it sought correction of the disparity.
The appeal court agreed. It held that the sentencing mistake required intervention because suspended sentences carry real consequences and there was no rational basis for Johnny McDonagh’s term to be half his brother’s.
The three-year suspended sentence was quashed and replaced with six years suspended. All other conditions remained unchanged.