The Court of Criminal Appeal has refused an application by Ronald McManus for leave to appeal against the severity of his life sentence for manslaughter. The court concluded that the sentencing judge had made no error in principle.
McManus had been charged with murdering 14-year-old Melissa Mahon, whose death occurred in Sligo between 14 and 30 September 2006. A jury found him not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. The trial judge sentenced him to life imprisonment. The court had already refused his separate application for leave to appeal against his conviction in a judgment delivered on 12 April 2011.
McManus argued that a life sentence was too severe after the manslaughter verdict, and that the sentencing judge had shown bias in remarks about his demeanour at trial. He also challenged the weight given to his previous convictions, the disposal of Mahon’s body and the inability to establish her cause of death. He argued that the prosecution had not shown serious physical violence. The prosecution opposed the application, submitting that the judge had applied the relevant sentencing principles and could consider the circumstances surrounding the killing and its aftermath.
The appeal court said life imprisonment is the maximum sentence available for manslaughter, although it is appropriate only in rare and exceptional cases. A manslaughter conviction after a murder charge does not, by itself, prevent a life sentence. The court said events closely connected to the unlawful killing may be considered in sentencing, including events immediately before and after the death.
In reviewing the circumstances, the court referred to evidence that Mahon had been staying in McManus’s home, that his daughters saw her alive and later not breathing in a bed, and that her body was taken away in a sleeping bag and disposed of in the River Bonet. Her body was found in 2008 near Lough Gill; the cause of death could not be medically established. The court said the sentencing judge had excluded allegations of a sexual relationship and pregnancy because they had not been established.
The court found that the circumstances, including McManus’s involvement of his young daughters in disposing of the body and the significant age and trust disparity between him and Mahon, could support placing the offence at the most serious end of the manslaughter scale. It said the judge’s comments on McManus’s demeanour were not evidence of bias, and found no mitigating circumstances that required a lower sentence.
The court’s decision concerned only leave to appeal against the severity of sentence. It refused that application; the life sentence remained in place.