The Court of Criminal Appeal refused an application by D.G. to challenge a life sentence imposed for the murder of 14-year-old Darragh Conroy. It held that the trial judge had exercised his sentencing discretion correctly, including by ordering a review in 2014.
D.G. was 15 when the murder occurred. A jury convicted him at the Central Criminal Court on 19 July 2004. On 15 October 2004, the trial judge sentenced him to detention for life, backdated to 12 November 2003, and directed that the case return to that court in July 2014 for a sentence review.
The appeal judgment records that Conroy’s body was found at 11.10pm on 11 November 2003 on the banks of the River Owness, near Mountmellick, County Laois. It says D.G. lured him to the river and struck him with a hammer. The facts of the offence were not in dispute on appeal.
D.G.’s counsel argued that his age and the prospect of rehabilitation called for a sentence that gave him a point at which he could expect release. The Director of Public Prosecutions argued that a sentence subject to a future court review was not sound sentencing policy. The appeal court said the trial judge had not held D.G.’s not-guilty plea against him and had considered the relevant mitigating factors.
The appeal court accepted that very young people convicted of grave offences require particular consideration of rehabilitation and welfare. It said a later court review may be appropriate for this special category of offender, while leaving the Executive’s separate powers of clemency or statutory early release intact.
The court concluded that the trial judge was entitled to find, on the evidence available at sentencing, that D.G. remained a danger to society and particularly to his father. Given the nature of the murder and D.G.’s circumstances at the time, it upheld the life sentence and the 2014 review provision. The review would allow the court to reconsider the sentence’s length, including in light of rehabilitation. The application was refused; the judgment did not itself determine the outcome of the future review.