Jonathan Dowdall sentence for facilitating murder ‘very lenient’, Court of Appeal says

The four-year sentence imposed on former Sinn Féin councillor Jonathan Dowdall for facilitating the murder of Kinahan cartel member David Byrne at the Regency Hotel was “very lenient”, the Court of Appeal has found in dismissing the convicted torturer’s bid to have his jail time reduced.

Upholding the former electrician’s sentence on Friday, the President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice George Birmingham said that counsel on behalf of the Director of Public Prosecutions had commented that the imposition of such a significantly reduced sentence may in all the circumstances be considered generous.

“We would not demur from that observation. Indeed, in our view, the sentence imposed, when viewed in the round, has to be seen as lenient – indeed, very lenient,” said Mr Justice Birmingham.

Dismissing the appeal, Mr Justice Birmingham, who sat with Ms Justice Una Ní Raifeartaigh and Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy, said the court was in no doubt that the sentence imposed by the Special Criminal Court was one that fell within the available range. “If we had any doubts about the appropriateness of this sentence, it would be as to whether a more severe sentence ought to have been imposed. However, we will contend ourselves by saying we are entirely satisfied that the sentence cannot be regarded as unduly severe,” he added.

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Moving to appeal his sentence last month, Dowdall’s barrister, Michael O’Higgins SC, told the Court of Appeal that his client had been “duped” and put in the “firing line” for the Regency Hotel attack.

Lawyers for Dowdall also argued that he may not have faced any trial at all if he’d been allowed to bring an application to dismiss the charges against him, but was denied that chance by a legal “quirk” after being charged before the non-jury Special Criminal Court rather than the District Court.

Room 2104 in the Regency Hotel was booked in the name of Jonathan’s father Patrick Dowdall on February 4th, 2016, one day before Mr Byrne’s murder. Jonathan Dowdall, the sentencing court heard, had driven his father to the hotel on the evening before the attack and a phone associated with him used a mast at the hotel.

During the 52-day trial of Gerard Hutch, who was acquitted of the murder of Mr Byrne at the Regency Hotel and walked from court a free man, Dowdall said he and his father drove to the hotel and his father went inside, gave his name and paid for the room. Dowdall said he remained in his jeep in the car park of the hotel until his father came back and the arrangement was that they would drop the key cards for the room into the home of Patsy Hutch, Gerard Hutch’s older brother, on Champions Avenue in Dublin’s inner city.

“I rang Patsy to say we were on the way to the house with the key and we were told to leave them on Richmond Road. We went to Richmond Road ... and Gerard came and my father gave Gerard the cards,” Dowdall claimed.

The State’s case at Gerard Hutch’s trial was that, after the Regency attack, Mr Hutch asked Dowdall to arrange a meeting with his provisional republican contacts to mediate or resolve the Hutch-Kinahan feud due to the threats against the accused’s family and friends.

Dowdall sat in the jury box on Friday for the result of last month’s appeal hearing flanked by several prison officers.

Appealing the severity of his four-year sentence for facilitating the Regency attack last month, Mr O’Higgins, for Dowdall, told the three-judge court that while the State may say the hotel room at the hotel was part of the “launching pad” for the murder of Mr Byrne, he would submit it was the “launching pad for a contrived event plan of disinformation, which was put together in a way where my client was left front and centre”.

During the investigation, gardaí established the person using the room in the Regency Hotel was Kevin Murray, who had had known paramilitary connections with the IRA. Murray was very visible over the course of the day on CCTV footage and walked around the hotel freely, while during the attack he was seen on CCTV footage with a handgun held aloft.

During Dowdall’s sentence hearing on June 20th, Mr O’Higgins submitted that Murray was there to attract attention on the basis that investigating gardaí would be misdirected in a paramilitary direction.

Court of Appeal president Mr Justice George Birmingham said last month that when he first read the appellant’s submissions, his first reaction was that Dowdall had done “extraordinarily well” and asked should he as a judge be drawing attention “to the range of options open”.

The judge pointed out that there were “elements of unreality” about some of the arguments advanced in the submissions. “This is a person who pleaded guilty to an offence and someone who came before the court having been convicted of a very serious offence in the past and had served a substantial sentence, could he have had any expectation of doing better than he did?” asked the judge.

Mr Justice Birmingham went on to remark that a major issue was that the decisions taken by the appellant were going to have an effect not only on himself but also his family and that the sentencing court had been very conscious of that by making “unusual discounts and then made additional discounts”.

Other grounds of appeal included that Dowdall wasn’t “a time waster or a tyre kicker”, was subjected to up to ten days of cross-examination by counsel during the murder trial of Gerard ‘the Monk’ Hutch and to his credit “went through that process”. “A person who wants to cross that Rubicon should be aware that courts recognise the huge and significant life changes that flow from that,” he added.

Mr O’Higgins argued that the Special Criminal Court had weighed the consequences of how Dowdall’s life was going to “irredeemably” change on becoming State’s witness “with a blindfold”, that the sentencing court didn’t hear the specifics and did not know what the future held for his client. “He could have made his plea, been sentenced, walked out and refused to give evidence,” he said.

Counsel also noted that Dowdall should have been entitled to a 30 per cent discount for his guilty plea instead of a 25 per cent one and that a headline sentence of six years was appropriate rather than an eight year one. “The headline sentence was too high, the discount for his plea [too low] and insufficient weight was given to his psychological and medical reports, with part reference to upending and the change to his life,” submitted Mr O’Higgins. The lawyer also pointed out that “it shouldn’t be lost in sight that there had been a previous history of booking hotel rooms [by his client for the Hutches] for credit purposes”. He said most hotels won’t allow a hotel room to be booked without a credit card.

Ms Justice Una Ní Raifeartaigh told the lawyer that it sounded like he was saying that his client had booked a room for an entirely innocent purpose and pointed out that he had pleaded guilty to the facilitation offence. “It sounds like you are coming very close to the line,” she said.

Mr O’Higgins said he did not accept that because one cannot equivocate that they are put in a straight jacket. “The law has to be clearly identifiable and it also must be flexible, the reality of the situation was that he was looking at trial for murder, he had offered assistance and he could not offer the plea without admitting what he did,” he said.

He said there was a difference between a person buying burner phones – which he said was a “glowing red flag” – and booking a hotel room, which can lead straight back to the individual. “It makes them morally less culpable, Dowdall was morally weak in putting himself in that position but he has paid a very high price,” he said.

Opposing the appeal last month, counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Sean Gillane SC, said the central point in the State’s submissions was that the four year sentence handed down to Dowdall could be regarded as generous in terms of the overall nature of the case”.

The hotel room booked at the Regency Hotel, Mr Gillane said, was the “launch pad” for the murder of Kinahan Cartel member David Byrne; “that was the facilitation of a criminal organisation”. “It was not just the credit card being used to reserve a room but it also involved the bringing of a hotel key to the leading member of that criminal organisation,” he submitted.

He said the nature of the organisation was very relevant and there was also clear evidence that the Hutch Criminal Organisation, a tier one organisation, was involved in murder, money laundering and firearms.

The State’s barrister said the four year sentence received by Dowdall was “indeed a generous” one and reflected the sentencing court giving as much measure as possible to the appellant, given the circumstances he had found himself in.

On September 28th, 2022 Dowdall (44) – a married father of four with an address at Navan Road, Cabra, Dublin 7 – pleaded guilty at the Special Criminal Court to making a room available to the Hutch gang at the Regency Hotel, Swords Road, north Dublin, where the notorious murder of Kinahan cartel member David Byrne (34) occurred in February 2016.

The appellant had been originally charged with the murder of Byrne in April 2021 but the State dropped that charge after Dowdall admitted to the lesser charge of facilitating the Hutch gang by making a hotel room available for use by the perpetrators the night before the attack.

On October 17th 2022, Dowdall was sentenced by the Special Criminal Court to four years imprisonment for facilitating the Hutch gang in the murder of Byrne, as part of the first convictions in the long-running investigation into the Regency Hotel shooting. In December of last year, Dowdall launched his appeal against his four-year jail-term for facilitating the murder.