A Clare man who robbed a US bank has been sentenced to almost ten years in prison.
Niall Gerard Clarke (28), from Kilrush, whom the judge acknowledged was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time he committed the crime, was found guilty of robbing a bank in Bangor, Maine, in October 2006.
The former academic student received a sentence of nine years and nine months including a statutory seven-year term for using a gun during a robbery.
However, judge John Woodcock who passed sentence on Mr Clarke said he may serve part of his sentence in Ireland.
Mr Clarke, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia at a clinic in Ennis, Co Clare, abandoned his start-up computer business to travel in India and later the US.
The court heard evidence that Mr Clarke was one of the most gifted computer science students his lecturers had ever encountered at Trinity College Dublin.
However, Clarke was showing signs of stress before he graduated in 2002 which his family initially credited to exam pressure but later saw as the first evidence of serious mental illness.
Mr Clarke's family had objected to their son's guilty plea and had hoped the court would allow him to change his plea to insanity.