The Court of Appeal has found that a four-year sentence, with its final two years suspended, for causing serious harm was unduly lenient. The court said the sentence required Anthony Kelly to serve only two years in custody and did not adequately reflect the gravity of the offending.
The judgment, delivered on 4 June 2015, concerned an application by the Director of Public Prosecutions to review the sentence imposed by Limerick Circuit Court on 10 February 2012. Kelly had pleaded guilty to four offences, including causing serious harm. The court described that offence as an unprovoked slashing of a 21-year-old man’s face with a knife, leaving a visible scar and permanent disfigurement.
The four offences took place in Limerick city over 13 and 14 May 2011. They included the robbery of about €50 and a Nokia mobile phone at an apartment on Catherine Street, the theft of a chain from another man, the serious assault, and the theft of €5 from a woman. The judgment said the victim of the serious assault had not wished to make a victim impact statement. A prosecuting garda told the court he was afraid to attend court and was trying to get on with his life.
The sentencing judge had also activated a previously suspended two-year burglary sentence, imposed in 2010, and ordered it to run consecutively to the sentence for the four offences. The Court of Appeal recorded that Kelly had previous convictions, including for assault and malicious damage, and was heavily under the influence of intoxicants at the time of the offences.
The DPP argued that the sentencing judge had not given sufficient weight to the knife, the injury and the absence of provocation, and that imposing another partially suspended sentence was an error given Kelly’s failure to comply with an earlier suspended sentence. Kelly’s counsel argued that the judge had considered the aggravating and mitigating factors, including his guilty plea, and could suspend part of the sentence in light of rehabilitation proposals. Counsel accepted the sentence was lenient but argued it was not unduly lenient.
The Court of Appeal said it should give great weight to the sentencing judge’s reasons and noted the care taken in the sentencing decision. It nevertheless concluded that the aggravating factors had not received due weight. The judgment states that the court held the sentence unduly lenient; the supplied text ends at that finding and does not set out any further order or replacement sentence.