Man who stabbed ex-wife has half of sentence suspended on appeal
A Dublin man who repeatedly stabbed his ex-wife in the stomach with a bread knife has succeeded in having half of his six-year sentence suspended on appeal.
Clive Kearns (aged 60), of Achill Road, Ballybrack, had pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assault causing serious harm to Ms Dorothy Gilsenan at her then home in Whitehcurch Avenue, Rathfarnham on January 17, 2008.
The Court of Criminal Appeal concluded that sentencing judge Katherine Delahunt had committed an error in principle by failing to reveal her explicit reasoning process for imposing a six-year sentence on the father-of-one last March.
The original sentence hearing had heard how, a year after their relationship had broken down, Ms Gilsenan was confronted by Kearns outside her home in Rathfarnham.
Kearns accused Ms Gilsenan of having a relationship with someone else before producing a bread knife, which he had taken from his house with the intent on using on himself, and stabbing her three times in the stomach.
Ms Gilsenan, who also sustained cuts to her arms while attempting to fend off her attacker, managed to gain entry to the house but was followed swiftly by Kearns, who further assaulted her in the kitchen.
Kearns was removed from the house but remained sitting on an outside wall awaiting the arrival of investigating gardaí.
Presiding judge Mr Justice Donal O’Donnell, sitting with Mr Justice Declan Budd and Mr Justice Daniel O’Keeffe, said that the court had concluded that the sentence was toward the upper end of the scale and was “somewhat out of kilter” with sentences for similar and even more serious offences.
Counsel for the applicant, Mr Erwan Mill-Arden SC, had told the court that this was a “sad and unusual case” where a man who had remained in a state of “blissful innocence” for 60 years seriously assaulted his wife while grappling with ill health and psychiatric difficulties.
Mr Mill-Arden submitted a letter from Ms Gilsenan’s solicitor which confirmed that family law matters involving the transfer of the family home to Ms Gilsenan and other personal injury matters had been resolved in full.
He said that this had spared Ms Gilsenan any further trauma and demonstrated the level of Kearns’s remorse.
In suspending the last three years of Kearns’s six-year custodial term, Mr Justice O’Donnell said the court noted that in the human experience, people sometimes do very strange things in relation to the person that they once loved.
He said the court was mindful that people who otherwise would have not come to attention of the law sometimes do because of an inappropriate reaction to the breakup of relationship.
However, he said the court found it utterly unacceptable that someone could take bread a knife and use it on their wife, and that such an offence must result in a prison sentence.
