The Court of Appeal has dismissed Declan Moran’s appeal against the severity of his prison sentence for dangerous driving causing death, leaving in place a six-year term with its final year suspended for three years after release. The court also left unchanged a 10-year driving disqualification, which Moran had not challenged.
Moran pleaded guilty in Castlebar Circuit Criminal Court in June 2017 to dangerous driving causing death, leaving the scene of an accident and failing to report an occurrence. The latter two offences were taken into consideration at sentencing. In October 2017, the trial judge set an eight-year headline sentence, reduced it by two years for mitigation and suspended the final year of the resulting six-year term.
The collision happened on the N26 at Ballinahaglish, near Ballina, on 8 May 2016. The judgment says Moran had pulled onto the hard shoulder to make a mobile phone call, then attempted an illegal U-turn across the path of a motorcycle. The motorcyclist, Martin (Morch) Wynne, died at the scene. Moran left before Gardaí arrived and was found at his home after a search lasting just over two hours.
A urine sample taken 3 hours and 14 minutes after the collision showed 183 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of urine. Screening also detected cocaine; Moran told interviewers he had taken cocaine a day and a half before the collision, but not that day. He had a 2010 conviction for drunken driving, for which he was fined and disqualified from driving for three years.
Moran argued that the trial judge had overstated the seriousness of the offence by choosing an eight-year starting point and had not given enough credit for mitigation. The appeal court said the sentence was severe and probably at the outer limit of the trial judge’s discretion, but was not excessive. It said Moran’s conduct was seriously reckless, his earlier drink-driving conviction was a significant aggravating factor, and the other two offences also mattered because they were taken into consideration.
The appeal court concluded that mitigation had been reflected adequately, if not generously, in the two-year reduction from the headline sentence. It also considered the suspended year appropriate as an incentive to rehabilitation. The court dismissed both grounds of appeal and the appeal itself.