The Court of Appeal reduced a sentence for stealing €20 worth of petrol to three months, to run concurrently with a sentence for robbery. It found that the original consecutive sentence was disproportionate and that the sentencing judge had not explained why it should be imposed.
The appellant had pleaded guilty at the first opportunity to robbing a shopkeeper of tobacco and cigarettes worth €66 on 14 October 2017, and to stealing petrol from a filling station four days later. The appeal concerned only the petrol theft sentence, not the robbery conviction or sentence.
In November 2018, the Circuit Court imposed three years’ imprisonment for robbery, with the final year suspended, and two and a half years for the petrol theft, with the final 18 months suspended. The second sentence was consecutive, producing a total term of four and a half years, with the final 18 months suspended subject to conditions.
The appeal court said the petrol theft was a minor offence, while acknowledging that relevant previous convictions could affect that assessment. The appellant had 19 previous convictions since 2016, including convictions for burglary and theft, but none concerned this type of conduct, the judgment said. The court also noted his early guilty plea and remorse, that he was a young father of two, and that he had not served a prison sentence for dishonesty offences.
The Director of Public Prosecutions accepted that the sentencing judge had moved from non-custodial sentences for previous dishonesty offences to a custodial sentence. The appellant argued that the headline sentence for the petrol theft was too high and that making it consecutive breached the totality principle. The DPP relied on the separation of the incidents and the court’s discretion to impose consecutive terms for unconnected offences.
The Court of Appeal held that consecutive sentences must be imposed in a considered and reasoned manner. It found no such explanation here and concluded that imposing a consecutive sentence was an error in principle. It also considered the two-and-a-half-year term, even with part suspended, disproportionate to the offence and the appellant’s circumstances.
On resentencing, the court imposed three months’ imprisonment for the petrol theft, concurrent with the robbery sentence. The judgment also noted confusion about how the suspended portion of the first sentence interacted with the consecutive second sentence, but did not alter the robbery sentence.