The Court of Appeal varied Larry McCarthy’s six-year sentence for violent disorder, directing that its final 15 months be suspended after his release. The court left his separate three-and-a-half-year sentence for assault causing harm unchanged.
In an ex tempore judgment delivered on 11 June 2018, the court said the sentencing judges had made two errors of principle. They gave excessive weight to McCarthy’s 1999 violent disorder conviction, imposed when he was 18 and almost 17 years before the offences under appeal. They also “almost” excluded mitigating factors, despite strong testimonials and evidence about his difficult family circumstances.
McCarthy appealed sentences imposed following his conviction in the Special Criminal Court on 3 July 2017. The charges arose from an assault and violent disorder at Cornmarket Villas, Limerick, on 25 November 2014. The appeal concerned the sentences, not the convictions.
The judgment’s account of the prosecution case said David Foran had gone to meet a man to receive money when he was confronted by several people, some with scarves covering their faces. It was alleged McCarthy was among them and stabbed Foran in the leg during a beating. Foran suffered a four-centimetre-deep puncture wound to his left thigh and was treated at Limerick University Hospital. The judgment said statements in which Foran identified McCarthy were admitted at trial under section 16 of the Criminal Justice Act 2016, after Foran sought to withdraw them.
The incident followed an earlier road collision involving Foran and a motorcyclist, identified in the judgment as Cathal Kavanagh. The judgment said Kavanagh later explained that he had given gardaí a false name because he was uninsured and disqualified. It was alleged that a payment and transfer of the motorcycle’s legal ownership had been agreed as compensation, and that another person attended the planned meeting on Kavanagh’s behalf.
The sentencing court had set notional sentences of three-and-a-half years for assault and seven years for violent disorder before imposing concurrent terms of three-and-a-half and six years. It treated the planned attack, weapons, intended harm and fear, and McCarthy’s previous violent disorder conviction as aggravating factors. The Court of Appeal’s order altered only the six-year term: it re-imposed that sentence from the commencement date set below and suspended its final 15 months, subject to a €100 bond to keep the peace for a period after release to be specified.