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Irish Court of Criminal Appeal
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> Irish Court of Criminal Appeal >> Twomey, D.P.P. (People) v. [2008] IECCA 132 (24 October 2008)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ie/cases/IECCA/2008/2008_IECCA_132.html
Cite as: [2008] IECCA 132
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THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEAL
Kearns J.
Budd J.
Birmingham J.
[130/08]
BETWEEN
THE PEOPLE AT THE SUIT OF THE DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS
RESPONDENT
AND
JOHN TWOMEY
APPLICANT
JUDGMENT of the Court (ex tempore) delivered the 24th day of October, 2008 by Kearns J.
In this case John Twomey, who is a forty-four year old builder, pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to a lady with whom he had had a two year friendship and relationship. He pleaded guilty in the Circuit Court on 18th April, 2008.
-2-
The episode in itself was obviously an unpleasant episode. The evidence suggests that it was a tiff or argument between the parties and really the offensive part about it was that at some point in this altercation Mr. Twomey put his hands to the throat of Alison McCarthy and obviously that was a very frightening aspect of this altercation for her. Fortunately the extent of any injury was that she was left with a red mark on her neck but nothing more serious than that and when the matter came to be dealt with in court Mr. Twomey had gathered together €1,000 by way of compensation for his former partner to compensate her for what he had done.
The applicant is a forty-four year old builder who was only ever in previous trouble for a public order offence, so effectively this was a first offence and it has to be said that the imposition of a four year sentence in those circumstances was really considerably in excess of what would be regarded as appropriate, both having regard to the facts of the particular incident and having regard to the background circumstances to which I have alluded.
The Court takes the view that this case could adequately have been met by the imposition of a two year sentence, a goodly portion of which should have been suspended and what the Court is going to do is reduce the sentence in this case to two years and suspend the balance of the sentence as and from today.