The Court of Appeal has dismissed Stephen Coyle’s and Leroy Howard’s appeals against the severity of their sentences for violent disorder and assault causing harm arising from a 2016 attack in Ashbourne, Co Meath.
In a judgment delivered on 12 May 2022, the court held that the sentencing judge was entitled to set a ten-year headline sentence for violent disorder, the maximum available for that offence. It said the level of violence made the offending very serious and that the headline sentence fell within the available range.
Coyle and Howard had each pleaded guilty to violent disorder and assault causing harm. Both received seven-and-a-half years’ imprisonment for violent disorder and four years for assault causing harm, with the terms running concurrently. The final 24 months of Coyle’s violent-disorder sentence were suspended; Howard had the final 12 months suspended.
The appeals challenged the ten-year headline sentence and argued that the sentencing judge had given insufficient weight to mitigation. Coyle also argued that the judge had not adequately distinguished his circumstances from Howard’s. The appeals referred to the attack’s short duration, lack of weapons and lack of premeditation. The prosecution submitted that the violence was exceptionally intense and that events earlier in the evening meant it had not begun entirely spontaneously.
The court said a different judge might have selected a slightly lower headline sentence, but that alone would not justify intervention. The sentence would have to fall outside the available range, which the court found it did not. It also said comparator cases involving different circumstances could not determine the outcome.
The attack took place in the early hours of 1 August 2016 near the Main Street and the gates of Ashbourne Garda station. The judgment’s account of the sentencing evidence described Anthony Morgan being surrounded, knocked to the ground and kicked in the head and face. CCTV evidence showed Coyle stamping on Shane Ryan’s head and Howard kicking him in the face. Morgan suffered serious head and brain injuries, including an occipital fracture, and had not recovered his sense of smell by the sentencing hearing.
The appeal court found that the sentencing judge had sufficiently considered Coyle’s remorse, guilty plea, personal circumstances and other mitigation. On the disparity argument, it said the longer portion suspended in Coyle’s case reflected a distinction between the men. Howard’s sentence also ran concurrently with a separate four-year sentence for a later drugs offence. The court held that the treatment of Howard did not justify changing Coyle’s otherwise appropriate sentence.
Both appeals were dismissed. The Court of Appeal did not alter either sentence.