The Court of Appeal has allowed Tommy Hughes’s appeal against the severity of his sentence for sexual assault, suspending three years of a six-year prison term.
In a judgment delivered by Birmingham J. on 21 December 2015, the court set aside the sentence imposed by the Circuit Court and substituted a six-year sentence with the final three years suspended. The suspension remains subject to the same terms and conditions imposed below: Hughes must remain under Probation Service supervision for 12 months, comply with all directions and keep the peace for three years.
Hughes had pleaded guilty to one count of sexual assault, contrary to section 2 of the Criminal Law (Rape)(Amendment) Act 1990, committed on 13 August 2013. The Circuit Court had sentenced him on 11 December 2014 to six years’ imprisonment, with the final two years suspended for three years on those conditions.
The Court of Appeal described the offence as serious: a sustained assault on a lone woman in an isolated area of the Galway coast, which had a profound impact on her. The woman, described in the judgment as young and Spanish, told the sentencing court that the assault changed her life. She reduced her working hours, attended counselling and felt unable to take on new male students in her Spanish teaching work.
The sentencing judge had assessed the offence as at the very top of the scale of gravity and set an eight-year starting point before mitigation. He then imposed six years, taking account of the guilty plea and the behavioural implications of Hughes’s brain injury, and suspended two years to support rehabilitation.
On appeal, Hughes’s counsel argued that the offence had been placed too high on the scale and that insufficient weight had been given to mitigating factors, including the guilty plea, admissions to gardaí and medical and psychological reports. The prosecution argued that the sentencing judge had carefully reduced the starting sentence and suspended part of it for rehabilitation.
The Court of Appeal considered the offence to fall in the mid-range to upper-mid-range, rather than at the very top end. It set a six-year starting sentence before mitigation and held that suspending the final three years gave full regard to the mitigating factors and rehabilitation. The court altered the suspended portion; the six-year term remained.