The Court of Appeal has refused the Director of Public Prosecutions’ application to review as unduly lenient the sentence imposed on Keith Jackson Fleming for dangerous driving causing death and related offences.
Fleming received four years’ imprisonment, with one year suspended, at Naas Circuit Criminal Court on 9 March 2017. He was also disqualified from driving for 10 years, with the disqualification to begin on his release from prison. The Court of Appeal, in a judgment delivered on 31 July 2017, declined to change the sentence.
The offences arose from a crash on 28 November 2015. The court said Fleming, the deceased Dara Ooi Cottuli and a third man had been socialising and had borrowed a car. A forensic collision report concluded that the car left the road, struck a ditch, hedge, fence and stone pillar, and that significant speed was involved. No other vehicle was involved, and neither the car’s mechanical condition nor the weather contributed to the crash.
Cottuli died. The court recounted that Fleming told a paramedic he had taken “D10s and Zanex”. He later refused to provide a blood or urine sample after a statutory requirement was made. The judgment also noted that he was driving without a licence or insurance. It did not record a test establishing his level of alcohol or drug consumption.
The DPP argued that the four-year headline sentence was too low and reflected a significant error in principle. The Director pointed to the speed, alcohol and drugs, prior relevant convictions, the failure to provide a sample, and a later dangerous-driving offence committed while Fleming was on bail. The DPP also challenged the sentencing judge’s decision to activate 18 months of an earlier suspended sentence for a cannabis offence and direct that it run concurrently with the sentence for the crash.
Fleming argued that the sentence appropriately balanced aggravating and mitigating circumstances. The Court of Appeal said the offences were very serious and described the sentence as “a very lenient one”. It also said a more severe sentence might have been upheld, but that this alone did not justify appellate intervention. The question was whether the sentence fell outside the available range, allowing for the trial judge’s margin of appreciation.
The court said the sentencing judge faced an unusually tragic situation: one young man had died, and the other surviving passenger had later taken his own life. It concluded the sentencing approach was not impermissible and that no error requiring intervention had been established. The application was refused; the original sentence remained in place.