The Court of Appeal has increased Mark McCarthy’s sentence from nine to 15 years for his involvement in an armed kidnapping and €661,125 post office robbery. It granted the Director of Public Prosecutions’ application to review the original sentence as unduly lenient, quashed that sentence and substituted a 15-year term.
The judgment was delivered on 23 March 2018 by Mr Justice Birmingham, with Ms Justice Mahon and Mr Justice Hedigan. The original sentence was imposed by Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on 19 May 2017 after McCarthy pleaded guilty. The Court of Appeal ordered the substituted sentence to run from 30 November 2013.
The incident began at the Nawn family home in Forest Park, Drogheda, on 1 August 2011, according to the judgment. Armed men restrained Warren Nawn, his wife Jean Marie and their ten-week-old baby, and took them to locations in Dublin and Meath. Nawn was later directed to collect cash from the post office where he worked. The court said the robbery was planned, including by installing a camera in the post office beforehand. None of the stolen money was recovered.
The judgment said McCarthy was identified as a suspect after fingerprints were found on a torn pizza box and DNA matched cigarette butts in a bag recovered from a vehicle linked to the investigation. He denied involvement in 15 interviews. At sentencing, the prosecution accepted evidence that his life had been under threat over a drug debt, that he was under duress to take part and that he received no financial reward.
The DPP argued that the nine-year term was unduly lenient, challenging both the 15-year starting point used by the sentencing judge and the judge’s treatment of McCarthy’s record of 125 previous convictions. The Court of Appeal said a sentence well above 15 years, potentially in the range of 22 years to life, would have been warranted without mitigation.
But the appeal court agreed with the sentencing judge that significant mitigation applied, including heroin addiction, threats linked to a drug debt, some degree of duress, no financial benefit, a guilty plea and indications of constructive time in custody. It nevertheless found the nine-year term “clearly inadequate” and an error in principle, concluding that 15 years was appropriate after allowing for mitigation.
The court said it took account of the difficulty of resentencing someone after time had been served by backdating the substituted term. Its order was limited to quashing the original sentence and replacing it with 15 years’ imprisonment, beginning on 30 November 2013.