Man, 32, who attacked teens avoids more jail
A MAN with 230 previous convictions, who was jailed for two years for attacking two teenage boys, has avoided further prison time – despite the Director of Public Prosecutions successfully appealing his sentence.
Michael Cummins, 32, pleaded guilty to stealing an iPhone, making a threat to kill, burglary, false imprisonment and assault in Swords, Co. Dublin, on August 9, 2017.
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that Cummins threatened to pour what he said was acid into one of the boys’ eyes and said he was going to blow their house up during the incident, which came about during a ‘frightening’ druginduced paranoia.
He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment by Judge Martin Nolan on February 27, 2018.
The DPP successfully sought a review of Cummins’s sentence yesterday on grounds that it was ‘unduly lenient’.
The Court of Appeal accordingly added a two-year suspended sentence that will be hanging over him on his release from prison.
Judge Patrick McCarthy said the offence was ‘extremely serious’.
The injured parties were children, there was a ‘racial element’ to the offence and one of the boys had to jump from a first-floor window to escape, the court heard.
Judge McCarthy said the sentencing judge fell into error by affording too much weight to the mitigating factors, namely Cummins’s guilty plea and his progress towards rehabilitation.
He said the appropriate headline sentence could not have been less than six years, and that this came down to four years in view of the mitigating factors.
However, due to the fact that Cummins’s sentence was being lengthened on foot of a DPP appeal, the court suspended the final two years for two years.
His net sentence now stands at four years with two suspended.
The president of the Court of Appeal, Judge George Birmingham – who sat with Judge McCarthy and Judge Isobel Kennedy – told Cummins, of Applewood Avenue, Swords, to stay out of trouble for the suspended sentence period, or the two-year term would be activated.