The Court of Appeal has suspended the final year of a sentence imposed on Larry Connors after finding that the original sentencing structure gave insufficient weight to rehabilitation.
Connors had pleaded guilty to possessing articles intended for use in burglary after Gardaí stopped a black Subaru Legacy on 2 July 2013. The car accelerated away and was driven dangerously before crashing. Its four occupants fled on foot and Connors was arrested nearby.
Gardaí found cable ties, a lump hammer, vice grips, snips, a hacksaw, shears, scissors, balaclavas, a walkie-talkie handset and two nail bars in the vehicle. Connors was 17 at the time. His father, Edward Connors, was driving.
At sentencing in Naas Circuit Criminal Court in December 2014, Connors received two years and six months' imprisonment. The term was ordered to run consecutively to a sentence he was already serving for an armed robbery at a Tesco supermarket in Castlepollard, Co Westmeath, committed when he was 15.
For that robbery, Connors had received six years with the final three years suspended. The sentencing judge in the robbery case had expressly structured the sentence to leave an incentive for rehabilitation.
The Court of Appeal rejected Connors' argument that the combined sentences breached the totality principle. It also accepted that a custodial sentence for the burglary-tools offence was unavoidable and had to run consecutively because the offence was committed while he was on bail.
However, the court found an error in principle in failing to preserve enough of the rehabilitative incentive created only weeks earlier. Connors had not committed any new offence in the intervening period and had not yet had an opportunity to establish a record of progress in custody.
The two-and-a-half-year sentence was therefore quashed and replaced with the same term, but with the final 12 months suspended. Connors was also required to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for two years after release.