Cameron Blair's murderer fails in bid to reduce life sentence

BY EOIN REYNOLDS

A THEN-teenager who stabbed Bandon student Cameron Blair to death has failed in a bid to reduce the severity of his life sentence.

In March 2020 at the Central Criminal Court, the appellant pleaded guilty to murdering 20-year-old chemical engineering student Cameron Blair at a house on Bandon Road in Cork City on January 16th, 2020. The Court of Appeal found that the trial judge had properly taken into account the defendant’s lack of maturity, had set a sentence that was proportionate, and had sufficient regard for mitigating factors identified by the defence.

The three-judge court also dismissed a claim that by placing the review at 13 years, the judge had deprived the defendant of the right to apply for parole after serving 12 years.

Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy, delivering the judgment, said murder is ‘one of the most serious offences in our statute books’. She said the appellant’s actions deprived a young man of his life, ‘and took him away from his loving parents, family, and friends’.

She described as ‘shocking and deliberate’ his conduct in arming himself, displaying the knife and tapping it on his leg while laughing before delivering the fatal blow.

‘His actions were cowardly and callous,’ she said.

Ms Justice Kennedy said that the trial judge, Mr Justice Paul McDermott, made a careful assessment of all the facts with ‘conspicuous care and diligence’. She said no error in principle had been identified, the sentence was not outside the range available to the judge and it was not excessive or disproportionate.

The offender, at just four months shy of his 18th birthday, was not a ‘very young child’, and the sentencing judge did take due consideration of his age and other mitigating factors, including his guilty plea and remorse.

In relation to the complaint that the offender has been deprived of his right to apply for parole after 12 years, Ms Justice Kennedy said that the parole board will still be able to consider his eligibility for parole. The Court of Appeal will decide at a later date whether the anonymity of the accused remains in place considering he is now aged 21 years and is no longer a minor under the law.

Last month Karl Finnegan SC submitted to the threejudge court that Mr Justice McDermott had not sufficiently taken his client’s immaturity and ‘dysfunctional background’ into account when passing sentence.