Appeal court cannot change errors once juvenile turns 18

BY EOIN REYNOLDS 

IF the Court of Appeal finds that another court has made an error in sentencing a juvenile, it would not be able to impose a new sentence once the person turns 18, according to a judgment.

The three-judge court was asked to consider what jurisdiction it had in the case of a now 20-year-old man who was sentenced to detention for life with a review after 13 years having pleaded guilty to the murder of Cameron Blair, Ballinascarthy. 

Three years ago, the appellant pleaded guilty to murdering the 20-year-old chemical engineering student at a house on Bandon Road in Cork on January 16th, 2020.

The court heard that the appellant was just shy of his 18th birthday in April 2020 when he was sentenced by Mr Justice Paul McDermott at the Central Criminal Court.

Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy delivered the judgment of the three-judge Court of Appeal. She said that the issue arises because children are sentenced to detention and cannot be sentenced to imprisonment. If sentenced to a term that goes beyond their 18th birthday, they are transferred from the juvenile detention centre to the ordinary adult prison system once they reach 18 or shortly thereafter.

In submissions to the court, the Director of Public Prosecutions said that were the appeal court to find that the sentencing court had made an error, it could quash the original sentence but would not be able to impose a new sentence. Lawyers said that the appeal court is ‘confined to imposing a sentence or order which could have been imposed on the convicted person for the offence at the court of trial.’ The DPP argued that as the offender could not have been sentenced to imprisonment in 2020 and an adult cannot be sentenced to detention, the only option open to the appeal court would be to make ‘no order’ which would ‘result in the immediate release of the applicant.’

Ms Justice Kennedy agreed that the appeal court cannot sentence an adult to detention and it cannot sentence a person to imprisonment when that was not an option available to the sentencing court. She said the court would therefore be ‘constrained in the sentencing options’ available. She also rejected arguments from the appellant that the court could quash the life sentence and impose a period of detention. ‘It is not possible to sentence an adult to detention in a child detention centre,’ she said.