The Court of Appeal has dismissed Maura Thornton’s appeal against the severity of her sentence for manslaughter, upholding a ten-year prison term with the final three years suspended on terms.
In a judgment delivered on 21 July 2015, the court found no error in the sentencing judge’s approach or in the sentence imposed. It rejected Thornton’s claim that the judge had wrongly accepted prejudicial, unproven material about an earlier knife offence. The appeal concerned sentence only; Thornton had been acquitted of murder and convicted of manslaughter following a jury trial.
The court said Thornton had offered to plead guilty to manslaughter and that her remorse were important mitigating factors. It also identified her history of alcohol dependence and mental health issues, including periods of hospitalisation, as mitigation. Aggravating factors included her previous convictions, particularly an earlier knife offence that had resulted in injury, and medical evidence that the deceased had been stabbed 18 times.
The judgment recounted that Thornton and Kevin Joyce had been in a relationship, and that on 31 July 2011 he entered the rooftop area of her apartment in Salthill. Thornton left the apartment with a knife, confronted him on the roof and stabbed him 18 times. She returned inside and called gardaí, saying she had stabbed someone.
The court said the sentencing judge considered the mitigating and aggravating factors and set ten years as the appropriate starting point. He suspended two and a half years to encourage rehabilitation, then suspended a further six months in light of time Thornton had spent in custody before sentence. The resulting sentence was ten years, with three years suspended on terms.
Thornton also argued that she should receive credit for all time spent on remand. Her counsel could not provide the exact period, but said she might be entitled to a further six weeks. The Court of Appeal rejected that ground because of the uncertainty, while stating that the authorities could grant up to six additional weeks’ credit if it emerged that the six months already allowed did not cover her full pre-sentence custody.
The judgment records the sentence as imposed two days after the trial concluded on 28 January 2013, but gives the sentencing date as 13 March 2013. Those dates appear inconsistent in the source.