The Court of Appeal reduced Jason Davis’s effective prison sentence by one year after finding a substantial disparity between his sentence and that imposed on his co-accused, Dean McKenna. It said the reduction would narrow, but not eliminate, the difference.
In a judgment delivered on 10 March 2022, the court changed the sentence for aggravated burglary from seven years, with the final 18 months suspended, to six years with the same 18 months suspended. The effective term to be served fell from five and a half years to four and a half. Concurrent sentences for two criminal damage offences were not changed.
Davis had appealed the severity of the sentences imposed by the Circuit Court in Dundalk on 27 May 2020. The offences arose from two incidents on Beechwood Avenue, Drogheda, in January 2017. On 1 January, bricks were thrown through a panel in a woman’s front door and a nearby car was damaged with steel bars. The car damage was estimated at about €600.
A week later, two men entered a home at 35 Beechwood Avenue after smashing windows. The judgment said the property damage was about €1,589. Davis’s co-accused was described as the more prominent intruder: he knocked the householder to the floor and had a knife and golf club during the incident. The knife was not used.
Davis argued that his headline sentence for aggravated burglary was too high and that the sentencing judge had not given enough weight to mitigation, including his guilty plea and rehabilitation efforts. At the appeal, the central issue became the difference between his sentence and McKenna’s, who had been sentenced separately by another judge.
The Court of Appeal reviewed McKenna’s sentencing transcript. McKenna had been sentenced for a broader set of incidents, including two visits to a home on 8 January involving petrol bombs and an incident at the Conlon home. His aggravated burglary sentence was three and a half years, with the final 18 months suspended. The Court of Appeal said McKenna’s culpability was objectively greater, while Davis had a more extensive record: 39 previous convictions, compared with 11 for McKenna.
The court said co-offenders should ordinarily receive the same or similar sentences where their culpability and personal circumstances do not appreciably differ. But it also said parity cannot justify replacing an appropriate sentence with one that would be unduly lenient. It considered Davis’s original sentence within the sentencing judge’s available range, but concluded that the extent of the disparity caused sufficient concern to require a reduction. The appeal was allowed to that limited extent.