The Court of Appeal has imposed an effective two-and-a-half-year prison term on Mark Kearney for falsely imprisoning a man who was chained by the wrist inside a disused car following a dispute over an alleged drugs debt.
Kearney had pleaded guilty in November 2020 to false imprisonment arising from events on November 10, 2018. Meath Circuit Criminal Court sentenced him in April 2022 to three years' imprisonment but suspended the entire term subject to conditions.
The Director of Public Prosecutions challenged that sentence as unduly lenient. On February 17, 2023, the Court of Appeal agreed and quashed it.
The court heard that Kearney and Patrick Lumumba met by chance at a property in Ballymun, Dublin. After a dispute over money, Kearney took Lumumba's passport and phone. Lumumba was later driven with Kearney and two others to Kearney's home at Cedarhurst.
There, he was placed inside a disused car and secured by a chain and padlock from his right wrist to the steering wheel. His shoes and socks were removed. He remained there for several hours before freeing himself and flagging down a passing motorist, who brought him to Blanchardstown Garda Station with the chain still attached to his wrist.
The Court of Appeal found that the detention was intended to force Lumumba to obtain money to pay the alleged debt. It rejected any suggestion that Kearney's apology to him or provision of a blanket reduced his culpability.
The court accepted genuine mitigation, including Kearney's guilty plea, admissions to gardaí and progress in addressing longstanding drug addiction. However, it held that the original three-year headline sentence was significantly below the appropriate range.
The court placed the offence in the mid-range for false imprisonment and selected a seven-year headline sentence. After mitigation, it reduced that to five years and suspended the final two years and six months on the same conditions imposed by the Circuit Court, including good behaviour, abstinence from illicit drugs and engagement with probation and treatment services.