The Court of Appeal has dismissed the Director of Public Prosecutions’ application to review as unduly lenient the fully suspended sentences imposed on two men who pleaded guilty to assault causing harm.
The judgment, delivered on 17 November 2020, concerned two sentences of two years’ imprisonment, suspended in full for two years. The appeal court said the sentences were lenient but did not represent a significant departure from the norm that would permit it to interfere.
The offences arose from an incident at a Spar shop on Portland Street on 8 June 2016. The judgment said the shop’s owner, Hua Feng Ji, and part-owner Hai Peng Li were among those who assaulted Kieran Buckley after staff suspected him of taking orange juice without paying. The court viewed about 11 minutes of CCTV footage. It found that the violence began suddenly: Buckley was knocked to the floor and kicked and punched, then physically restrained and moved around the shop. The court described the initial attack as ferocious and the restraint as prolonging his ordeal.
Buckley later received treatment in hospital for a collapsed lung, including insertion of a chest drain, and received four stitches. He also attended his GP for pain relief. Gardaí could not contact him to provide a victim impact statement. The judgment noted that the court could not infer from the absence of such evidence that the offence had little or no effect on him or his family.
The appeal court said the sentencing judge had not identified a headline sentence or explained how aggravating and mitigating factors shaped the final sentence. It nevertheless set out its own assessment: a 40-month headline sentence, with a discount of at least 50% for mitigation. It identified multiple participants, the intensity of the attack, the restraint and the harm requiring hospital intervention as aggravating features. It also considered the incident spontaneous and connected to a mistaken suspicion, against a background of shoplifting and a recent armed robbery affecting the business.
Mitigating factors included guilty pleas, no previous convictions, accepted genuine remorse, community contribution, some restitution and low assessed risk of reoffending. The court said suspending the resulting sentence to support reform and rehabilitation was within the sentencing judge’s discretion. It concluded that the fully suspended sentences were lenient, but not unduly lenient, and dismissed the application.