THE NUMBER of fatal stabbing cases coming before the Central Criminal Court is increasing and a steady pattern of yet further growth is projected, Mr Justice Paul Carney said yesterday.
Mr Justice Carney said that in his experience sitting in the Central Criminal Court, fatal stabbings broadly fell into three categories of assault.
The first group included ones where somebody gets beaten up in a fight, goes home to get a knife and then returns to the scene, where they were assaulted to seek revenge on their assailant.
The second group includes cases where somebody habitually carries a knife allegedly for their own protection and uses it in a fight and then often claims that they were merely waving the knife when the deceased unreasonably impaled himself on it.
The final category relates to cases where members of the immigrant community who have not integrated with Irish society, buy vodka or beer in an off-licence and are drinking in a flat when a row breaks out and one person reaches for a kitchen knife and stabs the other person.
In a speech entitled The Role of the Victim in the Irish Criminal Process Part III, which he delivered to the law faculty at University College Cork, Mr Justice Carney acknowledged the dissatisfaction expressed by campaign group AdVic over the leniency of some sentencing. He said one of the founder members of AdVic, Joan Deane deserves respect for comments she made that the courts are disconnected from the public they serve.
“Had she been aware of it, she might have mentioned that it is more and more the case that appellate judges have never had the responsibility of conducting a criminal trial themselves,” observed Mr Justice Carney who is adjunct professor at the faculty of law in UCC.
Mr Justice Carney said that his Central Criminal Court colleague, Mr Justice Barry White had endeavoured to do something about “the fatal stabbing epidemic by introducing a deterrent sentence”.
He quoted two separate fatal stabbing cases where Mr Justice White had imposed lengthy sentences of 20 years and 14 years for manslaughter. He quoted Mr Justice White in one of these cases as saying “a halt must be called to this type of conduct and deterrent sentences must be imposed in cases involving death and serious injury by the use of knives in the hope that such a halt will be effected”.
However, the Court of Criminal Appeal said that Mr Justice White had erred in principle in both cases and reduced both sentences on appeal to eight years while the appeal court also criticised a 10-year sentence he imposed in a third manslaughter case.
Mr Justice Carney said that judicial researchers of the High Court had informed him that after allowance had been made for the part suspension of many sentences, the effective average custodial sentence being imposed for manslaughter is six years.
When 25 per cent remission for good behaviour is factored in, it leaves “four and a half years as the term to be actually served”, said the judge.
Among those who attended last night’s address at UCC was Joan Deane and fellow AdVic members, Noeleen Lee and Pat Dillon, who welcomed Mr Justice Carney’s comments regarding the need to look at sentencing in the light of growing levels of violent crime.
