The Court of Criminal Appeal has refused Una Black’s application for leave to appeal the nine-year prison sentence imposed after she pleaded guilty to manslaughter, finding no error in principle by the trial judge.
Black pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court on 26 May 2008 to the manslaughter of John Malone. The appeal court’s judgment, delivered by Chief Justice Murray on 31 July 2009, said Malone died from a single stab wound to the upper left chest at Walter Macken Flats, Galway, on 3 December 2006.
The judgment said Black, then 24, and Malone, 42, were neighbours who had socialised and sometimes argued. Their final row concerned a puppy Black had asked Malone to mind. After an argument at her flat, Black went to retrieve the dog carrying a knife. In her Garda account, she said she wanted to scare Malone. The judgment said she returned to confront him and stabbed him during a further fight. Black said she could not remember the knife going in, but remembered it coming out.
The trial judge set a 12-year sentence before taking mitigating factors into account and imposed nine years. Black argued on appeal that the sentence was disproportionate, that the trial judge had not properly considered the manslaughter as involuntary, and that insufficient allowance had been made for her background, psychiatric and psychological reports, remorse, admissions and offer to plead guilty. Her pregnancy and the hardship of giving birth in prison were also raised in mitigation.
The appeal court said the precise basis on which the manslaughter plea had been accepted was unclear, but considered it difficult to characterise the case as anything other than involuntary manslaughter. It said the label mattered less than the facts: Black had left her home armed with a knife to confront Malone, and the judgment found no evidence that he posed a physical threat to her that night. The court placed the case in the upper part of the middle range of manslaughter gravity, while saying it was not in the most grave category.
The court considered the knife a significant aggravating factor and said the trial judge had properly weighed the mitigating evidence. It noted that Black’s admissions followed earlier denials and that her offer to plead guilty was tempered by her failure to attend the scheduled murder trial, after which she had gone to Wales. The court accepted the plea offer as a material mitigating factor, but said the trial judge had fully taken it into account. It also said the pregnancy-related hardship could not justify a sentence close to the 18 months Black could keep her child with her in prison.
The court concluded that the nine-year term adequately reflected the mitigating factors in light of the offence’s gravity and refused the application. The judgment concerns the sentence appeal; it does not revisit the manslaughter conviction.