Death drivers walking free in spite of family pleas to judges
JUDGES are prepared to let dangerous drivers walk free with suspended sentences – even after the victim’s family has begged for a jail sentence, an expert report reveals.
The research by barristers into how dangerous and careless drivers who cause death or injury are punished found that prison sentences are, on average, no longer than threeand-a-half years.
This is despite the fact that the maximum jail sentence for dangerous driving causing death or serious injury was doubled to ten years in 2011, when the 1994 Road Traffic Act was amended.
Sentences in over a third of cases examined were described as ‘lenient’. The report argues that although judges have often been strong in ‘condemning’ offending that puts all road users in danger, the sentences passed ‘perhaps need to reflect the severity of those comments’.
The report, which redacts the names of all the individuals involved, notes that the attitude of a victim’s family will not necessarily have any impact on the court’s sentence.
In an apparent reference to the case of Christopher Hanlon, then 21, who caused the deaths of his girlfriend and three-month-old daughter in Donegal in 2008 after failing to change the bald tyres on his car, the report says: ‘While the victim’s family’s attitude may be taken into account or (be viewed as) “extremely important”, it is not definitive.
‘In one case, the judge suspended the convicted person’s sentence, despite the fact that the victim’s family wanted him jailed. The judge stated that it was not his job to seek revenge.’
Kerry-Ann Meehan and her daughter Neisha were killed when the car driven by Hanlon burst a tyre, went out of control and smashed head-on into a jeep coming in the opposite direction on the evening of June 16, 2008.
In the process, Hanlon, from Donegal, who had only had the car for a month, also narrowly missed two young boys walking along the road, before veering head-on into the jeep.
The back tyres on his Toyota Corolla were bald and he had been spotted earlier in the day doing hand-brake turns, Letterkenny Circuit Court heard.
A friend had warned him that he needed to change them.
Ultimately, Hanlon was ordered to complete 240 hours of community service, instead of a twoyear jail sentence, which was suspended in full by Judge John O’Hagan at Letterkenny Circuit Court in November 2010. The judge also disqualified Hanlon from driving for eight years.
This was in spite of a harrowing victim-impact statement given to the court by Ann Meehan, the victim’s mother.
The 68-page Courts Service report was compiled by barristers and overseen by judges in 2014 as part of the now-defunct Irish Sentencing Information System for judges – but it has only emerged now.
It examined sentences imposed between 2010 and 2014.
The report classified the outcomes in 35% of dangerous driving cases as ‘lenient’, ranging from fully suspended prison terms up to one year in prison.
Of the lenient cases, the most common ‘mitigating’ factor identified was a guilty plea.
Sentences of between 15 months and three-and-a-half years, which occurred in 43% of cases, were described as ‘median’. Only 22% of sentences were termed ‘severe’, with terms ranging from four to seven years.
The document also notes that the views of the families of victims have led judges in other cases to impose more lenient sentences and makes an apparent reference to the case of Dean Healy, then 32, from Newport, Co. Tipperary, who caused his uncle’s death by drink-driving.
A judge gave Healy a suspended sentence, while commending the victim’s family for showing ‘Christian charity’ towards the accused after a victim-impact statement to the court by his uncle’s three children stated that Healy and his uncle had been ‘great friends’ and that they bore no ill feelings towards him.
The judge imposed a fully suspended three-year sentence and a ten-year driving ban.
The report also appears to reference the case of lorry driver Robert Eustace, then 34, who was spared jail after admitting dangerous driving causing the death of Aoife Kelly, 21, who had been battling leukaemia.
At the time of the crash, she had just got the good news that she was in remission.
Eustace, of Hayestown, Co. Wexford, had suffered a blackout before his sand lorry veered onto the wrong side of the road and ‘virtually drove over’ Ms Kelly’s car in September 2009, Wexford Circuit Court heard.
It emerged that Eustace had been warned by his doctor not to attempt to drive heavy goods vehicles again because he had been involved in a crash in 2005 in which he had suffered a blackout, the court heard.
Though he also had a drinkdriving conviction from 2007, there was no evidence of either drinking or speeding at the time his lorry careered into Ms Kelly, the court heard.
He was fined €1,500 and disqualified from driving for eight years by Judge Alice Doyle.
The report also appears to highlight the case of drink-driver Ronan Cunningham, then aged 30, who drove ‘blind drunk’ for 7km on the wrong side of the road and killed Emmanuel Mendes, 23, in October 2010.
He received a suspended sentence.
Sparing Cunningham, of Kingscourt, Co. Cavan, jail in 2012, Judge Martin Nolan said he didn’t believe that drink had caused him to do what he did.
Only after the DPP appealed the ‘leniency’ of that sentence was he jailed for three years.
Appeal judges found that Cunningham, who had consumed as many as ten pints of alcohol, was ‘blind drunk’.
The driver had as many as ten pints