The High Court sentenced D.D. to 10 years in prison for manslaughter after a jury convicted him by an 11-to-1 majority. The sentence was imposed on 29 July 2011 by Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan, who identified a 13-year starting point and reduced it to reflect mitigation.
D.D. had been charged with murdering C.S. The jury found him guilty of manslaughter on 2 June 2011. The court’s judgment says C.S. died after receiving multiple blows to the head with a hurley. She was a friend of D.D. and had been living in her home.
In explaining the sentence, the judge said D.D. had offered to plead guilty to manslaughter before trial and should be treated as having pleaded guilty. He also considered D.D.’s remorse and apology to C.S.’s family and friends, and the need to allow scope for rehabilitation. The judge noted that alcohol abuse had negatively affected D.D.’s life.
The prosecution submitted that the offence fell within the upper range of sentences for manslaughter. The court also considered a victim impact statement from C.S.’s sister, M.K., which described the loss and suffering of C.S.’s sister, children and siblings.
The judgment recounts that, in the early hours of 4 April 2010, C.S. called gardaí to say she was locked out and that D.D. was inside the house and would not let her in. Gardaí entered and found D.D. intoxicated and agitated. Later that morning, C.S. called a taxi driver several times; in the last call, she said something about being on the floor and asked to be taken out. At 9.24am, D.D. called gardaí, saying he had returned from a supermarket and could see a person’s legs through a blocked doorway. C.S. was pronounced dead at 9.55am.
The court also described evidence presented in the case, including a hurley bearing C.S.’s blood, blood on a fridge and a thumb mark in her blood matching D.D.’s fingerprint profile. D.D. had maintained that he believed C.S. was alive when he left that morning and denied involvement in her death. These details are part of the judgment’s account of the trial evidence; the sentencing decision was that the appropriate term, after mitigation, was 10 years’ imprisonment.
The judge considered D.D.’s previous convictions, including offences involving violence, but said they were not comparable in seriousness to this offence and did not amount to a progressive loss of mitigation.