The Court of Appeal has increased Donal O’Hara’s sentence for false imprisonment and assault causing harm, finding the Special Criminal Court’s original sentence unduly lenient to an appreciable extent.
In a judgment delivered on 12 April 2019, the court quashed the original sentence of three years’ imprisonment, with the final year suspended, and substituted a sentence of four years, with the final 12 months suspended. It imposed the same sentence for each offence. As in the original order, the sentences run concurrently with each other but consecutively to a 12-year sentence imposed by the Circuit Court in Clonmel for aggravated burglary.
The offences arose from events on 9 June 2015 at Keatings Business Park and a residential complex known as The Towers in Saggart, County Dublin. The judgment said a group prevented Martin Byrne from leaving a meeting, threatened him and took him to his home, where he, his wife Lisa and their son Brandon were told they had to leave. Byrne was detained and assaulted. John (Jay) Roche, another injured party, was found by members of the group and subjected to a violent assault in which O’Hara was an active participant, the court said. Roche suffered, among other injuries, a fractured nose and forearm.
The Special Criminal Court had identified four-year headline sentences for both the assault and false imprisonment offences. It cited O’Hara’s guilty plea, remorse, difficult childhood and medical difficulties, among other mitigating factors, and imposed a 25 per cent reduction before suspending the final year. The sentences were consecutive to the earlier aggravated burglary sentence because the offences had been committed while O’Hara was on bail.
The Director of Public Prosecutions applied to review the sentence as unduly lenient, arguing that the court had given insufficient weight to aggravating factors and the offences’ impact on the injured parties. The Court of Appeal said the crimes were very serious, noting that the assault on Roche took place during the false imprisonment and was witnessed by members of the Byrne family. It also described the false imprisonments as part of a campaign intended to force a family from its home.
The appeal court accepted that the respondent’s sentence being extended while he was already serving it would be a source of grave disappointment. It said that consideration, and deference to the sentencing court, limited its intervention; the substituted sentence was less than it would have imposed at first instance.