The Court of Appeal reduced Daniel Connors’s aggregate prison sentence from seven years to six and a half years after allowing a limited part of his appeal against sentence. It upheld the sentences on the criminal damage, stolen property and first dangerous driving counts, and left both driving disqualifications unchanged.
Connors had been convicted by a jury at Clonmel Circuit Criminal Court of four offences arising from events on 2 July 2015: criminal damage, possession of stolen property and two counts of dangerous driving. His separate appeal against conviction had already been dismissed on 15 May 2018. The Court of Appeal’s judgment on 3 July 2018 concerned sentence only.
The convictions followed a Garda pursuit of a jeep towing a trailer carrying stolen property. The Court’s account said Connors drove at speed on narrow roads, overtook on a bend, and forced a cyclist to take evasive action. On one occasion, he reversed into an unmarked Garda car as an officer was getting out; the car was damaged, but the officer was not injured. The trailer was later abandoned during the pursuit.
The sentencing judge had imposed six years for criminal damage, two and a half years for possessing stolen property to run concurrently, and six months on each dangerous driving count, with those driving sentences consecutive. The cumulative term was seven years, with the final year suspended on conditions. The appeal argued, among other things, that the sentences were disproportionate and gave too much weight to general deterrence. The prosecution submitted that the sentences were proportionate given the seriousness of the conduct and Connors’s record.
The Court of Appeal found no error of principle in the six-year criminal damage sentence, describing it as proportionate. It also upheld the sentences on the other offences, while recognising a limited problem with the second dangerous driving count: the evidence did not clearly establish which part of the extended incident it concerned. The prosecution accepted that the count should be treated as relating to the actual ramming incident. The court agreed that making its sentence consecutive risked counting that conduct twice.
The court therefore quashed the sentence on count four and re-imposed the same six-month term, this time concurrent with the sentences on counts one and two. The sentence on count three remained consecutive. The court left the driving disqualifications unchanged and maintained the suspension of the final 12 months on the same conditions. The resulting aggregate term was six and a half years’ imprisonment.