The Court of Appeal has dismissed Alan Jones’s appeal against the severity of his sentence, leaving in place a cumulative term of 13 years’ imprisonment with the final three years suspended.
The appeal concerned sentences imposed in the Circuit Court in December 2014, including the reactivation of two previously suspended sentences. The court said the total term comprised eight years to be served and five years suspended; the final three years of the later five-year sentence were suspended. It gave a current release date of 18 February 2021.
The suspended terms arose from a 2007 robbery at a bank in Tallaght, where €1,800 was stolen, and a 2008 robbery at a Tallaght bookmakers, where between €2,000 and €3,000 was taken. Jones had received suspended sentences for both offences. They were reactivated in full after later offences.
The appeal judges considered whether the whole of the suspended terms should have been reimposed. They noted the argument that Jones had spent periods away from Garda attention and had made efforts to address a long-standing heroin addiction. The prosecution argued that the later offences were serious and similar in character to the earlier robberies.
The court said that, under section 99(17) of the Criminal Justice Act 2006, a court may impose all or part of an original sentence after a suspended sentence is revoked, having regard to all the circumstances. It said the gravity of the offence that triggered revocation should be weighed against the original offence, and partial reactivation may be appropriate where the later offence is relatively minor by comparison.
In this case, the judges found the triggering offences were of much the same character as the original offences. A 2013 robbery of a woman at an ATM in Tallaght and a robbery at an off-licence in Marino both involved knives. The court said the sentencing judges had properly considered the offences, the suspended terms and the principle of totality, which accounts for the overall effect of consecutive sentences.
The appeal court found no error of principle in the sentencing approach and declined to interfere. The appeal was dismissed.