A convicted killer and rapist has had his jail sentence for a hammer attack on a young man and his mother increased from 8½ to more than 11 years after the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) appealed that the original sentence was unduly lenient.
The DPP had appealed against undue leniency of the sentence imposed at Cork Circuit Criminal Court on Ian Horgan (40) for assault causing serious harm to Hassan Baker (30) and assault causing harm to his mother, Mary O’Callaghan (67) at their home at MacCurtain Villas in Cork City on March 26th, 2022.
Prosecution barrister Donal O’Sullivan BL said the DPP believed the assault causing serious harm merited a headline 15-year sentence rather than the 12 years proposed by the trial judge, who it claimed failed to properly factor in Horgan’s previous convictions for manslaughter and rape when giving a discount for his guilty plea.
Defence counsel, Jim O’Mahony SC argued that if Horgan had sought to appeal the severity of the sentence following his guilty pleas, he would have advised him not to do so and he believed that the trial judge was not unduly lenient in her sentence but had structured it appropriately.
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Originally from Ballincollig, Horgan from The Hermitage, Macroom, Co Cork had been convicted in 2007 of the manslaughter and rape of Rachel Kiely when, aged just 16, he attacked and strangled the 22-year-old beautician as she walked her dogs in Ballincollig Regional Park on October 26th, 2000.
Delivering judgment at the Court of Appeal Criminal sitting in Cork, Mr Justice George Birmingham, sitting with Mr Justice John Edwards and Ms Justice Tara Burns, recapped on much of the evidence including the manner in which Horgan had travelled from Macroom to carry out the attack.
He noted how Horgan had brought a change of clothes with him and went to a derelict shed near Ms O’Callaghan’s house where he changed into a black hoodie and snood to disguise himself before forcing his way into Ms O’Callaghan’s home and attacking Mr Baker and grabbing him in a headlock.
He recalled how when Mr Baker slumped to the floor unconscious, Horgan began raining hammer blows down on his head, fracturing his skull and his left cheekbone and breaking Ms O’Callaghan’s wrist, all the time trying to disguise himself by speaking with a Dublin accent and talking about collecting a debt.
He also noted how afterwards Horgan filmed both Mr Baker and his mother while he also sent a message to his girlfriend, Clarisse O’Callaghan, who had previously gone out with Mr Baker, in which he boasted he had “destroyed him” and “he won’t be acting the hard man ever again”.
He said that the assault was offending of the most serious kind because of a number of factors including the degree of preparation and pre-planning involved and the fact he had forced his way into Ms O’Callaghan’s home before attacking Mr Baker with the hammer.
He said Mr Baker suffered serious head and face injuries and Ms O’Callaghan suffered a broken wrist while the fact that Horgan filmed both victims afterwards on his phone was yet another aggravating factor in the case which marked it out as offending of the most serious kind.
Mr Justice Bermingham said that court did not hold with the DPP that Horgan should have been given a consecutive rather than a concurrent sentence for the second assault on Ms O’Callaghan as it formed part of the same incident, but it could be considered an aggravating factor in the headline sentence.
He noted that Horgan had convictions for manslaughter, rape, robbery, drugs, and affray and while the court did not hold with the DPP that the trial judge should have taken this into account when giving a discount for his guilty plea, it should have informed the original sentence.
Considering all the circumstances, the seriousness of the offending was such that the sentence should be at the very upper end of the scale at 15 years rather than the 12 years imposed by the trial judge which was less than halfway along the scale for such serious Section 4 assaults and unduly lenient.
He said that the court would impose a 15-year headline sentence and give Horgan a 25 per cent discount for his guilty plea, resulting in a sentence of 11¼ years. He said that given Horgan’s previous record, he saw no merit in suspending any portion of the sentence as the trial judge had done to help rehabilitation.
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