Court of Appeal reduces sentence for Cork bus station robbery to four years

The Court of Appeal reduced Trevor O’Donoghue’s sentence for robbing €750 from Donal Lucey at Cork City bus station, replacing a five-year term with four years’ imprisonment. It suspended the final 18 months on terms similar to those set by the sentencing judge.

The court delivered its judgment on 18 October 2016 after hearing an appeal against sentence. O’Donoghue had pleaded guilty on 5 February 2015 to the robbery, which took place on 29 June 2014.

The principal appeal ground was that, before sentencing, the trial judge had wrongly been told O’Donoghue had a previous conviction for rape. The judgment records that the parties did not dispute the evidence given about this. The prosecution said the sentencing judge’s remarks referred only to previous convictions for robbery and assault. It also said O’Donoghue had a sexual assault conviction, but no rape conviction.

Prosecution and defence counsel had asked the sentencing judge to reopen the hearing weeks after sentence. He said he could not say whether the rape conviction had been in his mind and left the matter to the Court of Appeal. The appeal court said it was proper to address the issue, including because O’Donoghue could believe the wrongly attributed conviction had led to a higher sentence.

In reconsidering the sentence, the court noted O’Donoghue’s 44 previous convictions, including a 2003 robbery conviction, and the information given to the sentencing judge about his heroin addiction, which had continued from 2007 until sentencing. It also noted that he had made a serious effort to address his addiction in prison. The judgment said Lucey did not wish to make a victim impact statement and had asked that O’Donoghue not be jailed.

The court reduced the headline sentence to four years and retained the suspension of the final 18 months. The original sentence had also required O’Donoghue to be subject to the Probation Service for two years after release. The appeal judgment says the suspended portion was imposed on terms similar to those originally set; it does not restate each term.