The Court of Appeal has quashed sentences imposed on Patrick Harty for two assaults and resentenced him after finding the original terms unduly lenient. It imposed five and a half years for assault causing serious harm and a consecutive 12-month term for assault causing harm, while suspending the final two and a half years of the sentence on conditions.
The appeal was brought by the Director of Public Prosecutions under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1992. The sentences under review had been imposed by Waterford Circuit Court on 28 October 2016. Harty, who was 17 at the time of the more serious assault, had completed the sentence and been at liberty for several months by the time of the appeal judgment, delivered on 15 October 2018.
The serious assault happened at Poolderry, Waterford, on New Year’s Eve 2014 or in the early hours of New Year’s Day. The court said Harty broke a bottle and thrust it twice into the face and eye of a 19-year-old man who was turning away after an argument. The injured man lost vision in his right eye despite several operations. The court also considered a separate assault in Dungarvan on 1 September 2015, in which the injured party suffered cuts over both eyes.
The Circuit Court had imposed four and a half years for the serious assault, with the final 18 months suspended, and a concurrent one-year sentence for the second assault. The DPP argued that the serious offence belonged in the upper band of gravity, that the starting sentence was too low, and that the reductions, suspension and concurrent term together produced undue leniency. Harty’s counsel accepted the sentence was lenient but argued the appeal threshold for intervention had not been met, citing his youth, troubled background and remorse.
The Court of Appeal said a seven-and-a-half-year pre-mitigation starting point was appropriate for the serious assault. It recognised significant mitigation, particularly Harty’s youth and dysfunctional background, but held that reducing the sentence by two years and suspending a further 18 months made it “unduly lenient and clearly so”. It also found that the assaults, separated by months, warranted consecutive sentences. The later, unprovoked assault, the court said, called into question the genuineness of the remorse expressed for the first assault.
On resentencing, the court set the pre-mitigation figure for the second assault at 18 months and reduced that to 12 months. It made that term consecutive to the five-and-a-half-year sentence for the serious assault. Because Harty had already served his sentence and the new order would require him to return to custody, the court suspended the final two and a half years, conditional on a bond to keep the peace and be of good behaviour during his time in custody and for two and a half years afterwards.