The Court of Criminal Appeal increased Bridie Shinnors’s driving disqualification from two years to five after finding that the sentence for failing to keep her vehicle at the scene of a fatal collision was unduly lenient.
In a judgment delivered on 24 May 2007, the court substituted a three-month suspended prison term on conditions of good behaviour and keeping the peace for two years. It also ordered that the conviction be endorsed on her driving licence and that the five-year disqualification run from 1 September 2006.
The appeal was brought by the Director of Public Prosecutions under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993. The court first rejected Shinnors’s challenge to the DPP’s right to seek a review because the failure-to-stop charge was a summary offence included in an indictment alongside an indictable charge. The court held that, once included in the indictment, it had the same procedural status as any other count for this purpose. It also rejected her constitutional equality argument and her submission that the provision should be strictly construed against the review.
The collision happened on Black Road, about 200 metres from Newport, Co Tipperary, at about 2.15am on 24 October 2004. Siobhán Doyle, who was walking with two companions, was struck by Shinnors’s car and died. The evidence allowed for differing accounts of whether the impact happened on the footpath or roadway. The court noted that Shinnors believed the collision occurred on the roadway.
A jury acquitted Shinnors of dangerous driving causing death but convicted her of the lesser offence of careless driving. She pleaded guilty to failing to keep her vehicle at the scene. The Circuit Court had fined her €750 for careless driving and, for the failure-to-stop offence, imposed three months’ imprisonment suspended, endorsed her licence and disqualified her from driving for two years. The DPP’s application concerned only the sentence for failing to remain at the scene. The Court of Criminal Appeal did not alter the careless-driving fine.
The appeal court said the death was a relevant circumstance and noted evidence that Shinnors had been driving at 40 miles per hour in a 30-mile-per-hour zone. It said panic did not excuse leaving: she had not contacted Gardaí before they called to her home at 5.15am, and her car was parked behind the house. The court said these circumstances indicated an intention to avoid the consequences of her driving.
In mitigation, the court considered her repeated expressions of remorse, cooperation with Gardaí, guilty plea, lack of previous convictions, family circumstances and need for a car to travel to work. It concluded that the sentencing judge had given insufficient weight to deterrence for an offence that could allow a driver to evade detection and that could have serious consequences for the administration of justice.