The Court of Appeal has reduced Mario Tache's sentence for a robbery at a 3 Mobile store in Midleton, Co Cork, from two years to 18 months.
Tache entered the shop on 30 June 2018 and tried to pull a display phone from a counter. When the manager intervened, Tache punched him several times. He also pushed a female shop assistant before fleeing with a phone worth €900, which was never recovered.
Tache was 17 at the time. He admitted the offence when Gardaí interviewed him and showed him CCTV footage in May 2019, but he was not charged until September 2020. He later pleaded guilty and was sentenced at Cork Circuit Criminal Court in January 2021.
The Court of Appeal said the robbery was significant because it involved actual violence against two people. It considered that an adult with Tache's record would have faced a four-year headline sentence. His age at the time reduced the appropriate starting point to three years.
However, the appeal court identified several errors in the original sentencing exercise. The Circuit Court judge had mistakenly believed this robbery occurred after another robbery for which Tache had received a detention and supervision order. In fact, the Midleton offence happened first.
The court was also concerned that Tache had remained continuously in custody from January 2019. It held that the sentencing judge had not adequately applied the totality principle, which requires the combined practical effect of sentences to remain proportionate.
The judges also criticised the unexplained delay in charging Tache after his 2019 admission, stressing the importance of dealing promptly with offences committed by minors.
After setting a three-year headline sentence, the court reduced it by one year for his early plea and other mitigation. It then made a further reduction for totality, substituting an 18-month sentence backdated to 22 October 2020.