The Court of Appeal kept the prison terms imposed on Martin Stokes for an aggravated burglary, two false imprisonments and two assaults, but suspended the final 15 months of his eight-year sentences and the final three months of a seven-year sentence.
In its judgment delivered on 9 October 2017, the court allowed his sentence appeal to the extent that it found an error in the trial judge’s refusal to suspend any part of the sentences. It quashed the original sentences and re-sentenced Stokes. The four-year sentences for the two assaults remained in place, with no suspension specified for them.
Stokes had pleaded guilty in November 2015 to offences arising from an incident at a home in Co Kildare on 9 March 2015. The Court of Appeal recounted evidence that he entered through a bedroom window after 2.40am, restrained his estranged partner, Geraldine Cummins, with a blade and later a kitchen knife, and threatened to kill her. He also confined her mother, Anne Cummins, and a child in a bedroom. Relatives intervened, and Gardaí attended. The judgment said the incident affected five victims, including two children.
At the appeal, Stokes argued that the sentencing judge had failed to state a headline sentence or quantify the discount for mitigation, that the overall terms were too severe, and that his rehabilitation progress had not been reflected. The appeal court accepted the criticism of the sentencing judge’s explanation, but said that omission alone did not make the sentences wrong. It described the offending as exceptionally serious and said a starting point of about 12 years for the most serious offences could have been justified.
The appeal judges said evidence of Stokes’s progress in custody, including work addressing anger management and substance abuse, should have prompted serious consideration of suspending part of the sentences. They concluded that the trial judge’s failure to do so was an error.
The court set headline terms of 12 years for aggravated burglary and the more serious false imprisonment, 11 years for the second false imprisonment, and six years for each assault. It then deducted four years from each 12-year term, four years from the 11-year term and two years from each six-year term. The resulting terms matched those originally imposed: concurrent sentences of eight, eight, seven, four and four years. The court suspended the final 15 months of each eight-year sentence and the final three months of the seven-year sentence, citing Stokes’s rehabilitation work and the aim of encouraging him to continue.