The Court of Appeal has allowed Lisa Lynch’s appeal against the severity of an 18-month prison sentence, suspending the final six months after resentencing her.
Lynch had pleaded guilty to issuing 93 false invoices while a director of AGL Logistics. The invoices led Billy Financial Services to make payments and suffer a loss of €460,662. The offending took place over about six months, from May to October 2011.
The Dublin Circuit Criminal Court imposed the 18-month sentence on 12 December 2017. It had rejected a request for a non-custodial sentence. The sentencing judge described the offending as serious and said it was not a one-off, while recognising mitigating factors including Lynch’s guilty plea, cooperation, admissions and lack of previous convictions. The sentence was deferred until after the new year, and Lynch appeared before the Court of Appeal on bail, having spent no time in custody.
On appeal, the Court of Appeal said it would have preferred the sentencing judge to identify a headline sentence before applying mitigation. It stressed that this was best practice, but that failing to do so does not automatically require a sentence to be quashed. The appeal court was also uncertain about the credit given for mitigation, noting the sentencing remarks did not mention Lynch’s efforts to save money towards compensation or address a submission about the different prison regime for sentences above or below 12 months.
The court said the case involved systematic theft of almost half a million euro and, without mitigating factors, merited five years’ imprisonment. It considered the substantial mitigation, including Lynch’s early guilty plea, cooperation, remorse and efforts over four years to assemble €8,000 in compensation. It also took account of her family circumstances and material submitted about her seven-year-old son.
The court resentenced Lynch to 18 months’ imprisonment and suspended the final six months, saying the suspension recognised the powerful mitigating factors. The judgment does not state that the remaining 12 months were suspended.