Shane Millea gets manslaughter sentence cut on appeal

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Shane Millea was resentenced by the Court of Appeal on 1 December 2014 to eight years, with the final three suspended. The sentence ran from 2 December 2010, when he went into custody.

Originally charged with murder, Millea pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter on 12 March 2012. The Director of Public Prosecutions accepted that plea. Sentencing submissions were heard on 30 April 2012, and a ten-year sentence, with two years suspended, was imposed on 8 May 2012.

The offence occurred on 2 December 2010 and involved his cousin and good friend Paul Harris. Millea told gardaí that Harris attacked him with an axe and that he stabbed him to protect himself until the attack ceased. The judgment recorded that Millea sustained a soft tissue injury to his left arm when struck with the axe handle.

Gardaí found Millea performing CPR on Harris while receiving telephone instructions from the fire brigade service. Evidence about his emergency call described him as extremely upset and concerned for his cousin’s welfare.

The appeal court found that the sentencing judge had wrongly placed the offence at the upper end of the middle range of manslaughter offences. It also identified genuine remorse among the mitigating factors, saying the sentencing remarks did not indicate that it had been taken into account.

The judgment also recorded earlier knife-possession matters: possession on 29 April 2007 attracted a fine of 50, although the extract’s currency symbol is unreadable. A similar conviction on 4 October 2004 was dealt with under the Probation Act.

Ms. Justice Finlay Geoghegan delivered the Court of Appeal’s reasons on 6 May 2016, explaining the appeal decision and sentence already imposed in December 2014.