The Court of Appeal reduced Darren Coss’s sentence after finding that the six-year headline sentence set for making a threat to kill was excessive and amounted to an error in principle.
In a judgment delivered on 8 June 2020, the court quashed that sentence and resentenced Coss to four years’ imprisonment, with the final six months suspended. The suspension is conditional on a €500 bond for two years, probation supervision during that period and compliance with probation directions. The court also gave liberty to apply if difficulty arose concerning the bond.
Coss had appealed his sentence after convictions for assault causing harm, threatening to kill and producing an article capable of inflicting serious injury. The original total sentence was four years and six months, with the final six months suspended. The appeal did not challenge the sentences for assault or producing a weapon. The Court of Appeal found no error in those sentences and left them unchanged.
The offences arose from an incident on 11 August 2017. The judgment says the injured party, identified as Mr Byrne, saw Coss interfering with his lorry outside his house and went out to challenge him. According to the judgment, Coss became aggressive, produced an implement and injured Byrne’s hand. The judgment records differing descriptions of the implement: Byrne said it was a flick knife, while the probation report described a screwdriver. Coss also threatened to burn Byrne’s house and truck and told him, “you are dead”.
The sentencing judge had cited the weapon, the violence and threats, the impact on Byrne, Coss’s record and risk of reoffending among the aggravating factors. Mitigating factors included an early guilty plea, remorse, a difficult upbringing and the death of one of Coss’s children while he was on bail.
The Court of Appeal said the incident was serious and the threats were serious, but they were not, in their nature and manner, “of the most egregious kind”. It set a five-year headline sentence for the threat offence. The court said it would have considered an actual sentence of three years but for Coss having committed other offences while on bail.
Those District Court offences were before the sentencing judge, who suspended their sentences. The Court of Appeal said those sentences should have been consecutive under section 11 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984, but it could not interfere with them. It treated that circumstance as relevant to the sentence under appeal.
In reducing the sentence, the appeal court also considered a further document showing that Coss had been engaging with the Merchants Quay project.