The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal against two concurrent five-year prison sentences for endangerment, ruling that although the sentences were severe, they did not fall outside the available range.
The appeal followed a contested trial and convictions on two counts. The sentences were imposed at Castlebar Circuit Court on 14 June 2017. The Court of Appeal delivered its judgment on 22 October 2018.
The counts concerned two parts of a drive on 11 February 2016. The first related to reversing a car onto a footpath near two women walking in high-visibility jackets. The second concerned driving at excessive speed around a sharp bend on the wrong side of the road.
The judgment recounts Garda evidence that the driver continued at speed, overtaking on a continuous white line and while climbing a hill with oncoming traffic. At several bends, oncoming vehicles were forced onto the verge. The car was travelling at more than 150km/h, and the Garda said it nearly lost control at Derryclaha before continuing towards the N17. The driver denied the allegations when arrested in April 2016.
At sentencing, the Circuit Court judge set a six-year headline sentence before mitigation and imposed five years on each count, to run concurrently. The judge noted that nobody had been injured, an apology to the Garda, the appellant’s difficult background and probation-service concerns about a high risk of reoffending.
The appellant argued that the judge had wrongly placed the offences near the top of the scale. The Court of Appeal agreed that the judge had gone further than necessary in describing them that way, saying more serious examples could be envisaged. But it also cited 53 previous road-traffic convictions, including an earlier endangerment offence, and multiple disqualification orders in force when the driving occurred. The case had been contested, so the appellant did not receive the mitigation a guilty plea could have provided.
The court said that a sentence is not open to intervention simply because it might have imposed a somewhat different one. It concluded that the aggravating factors and limited mitigation meant the sentences, despite their severity, remained within the available range. The appeal was dismissed; the five-year sentences were left undisturbed.