Stephen Ennis’s sentence for hospital doctor assault increased on appeal

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

The Court of Appeal imposed a three-year prison sentence on Stephen Ennis, suspending the final six months, for assaulting a person providing medical care at St James’s Hospital in Dublin. The proceedings were reported on 25 May 2022.

Ennis pleaded guilty to the assault. It took place on 7 March 2020, and Judge Martin Nolan jailed him for one year in October 2020. The Director of Public Prosecutions appealed, arguing that the judge had given insufficient weight to the harm caused to the doctor.

The appeal court quashed the original sentence in February 2022. In her judgment, Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy set a four-year headline sentence and reduced it by one year to reflect Ennis’s efforts to tackle his drug addiction after a recent return to custody. She suspended the final six months.

Kennedy said the attack had a profound impact on the doctor, who had moved to Ireland hoping to become an emergency medicine consultant. The doctor later chose general practice and said the assault made him realise how vulnerable frontline healthcare workers were.

At the original sentencing hearing, Garda Ciaran O’Sullivan said Ennis had been brought to hospital after a seizure. The report said Ennis removed a needle from his wrist, charged at the doctor and stabbed him three times in the back. O’Sullivan agreed with defence counsel Keith Spencer that Ennis was a heroin addict whose seizure was caused by withdrawal. He accepted that Ennis had behaved erratically and said somebody was going to kill him.

Spencer said Ennis had a deep-rooted addiction at the time of the offence. On 19 May 2022, counsel told the appeal court that Ennis had relapsed and been detained on drugs and shoplifting charges. He said Ennis had not sought High Court bail because he preferred to remain in custody while trying to combat his addiction.