A WOMAN who was convicted of manslaughter has been jailed for one year, after the Court of Criminal Appeal ruled that her fully suspended sentence was unduly lenient.
Carol Craig (19), St James’s Drive, Tomhaggard, Wexford, and Palmerstown Woods, Clondalkin, Dublin, had been given a 3½-year suspended sentence after pleading guilty to the manslaughter of Sumbo O Woiya in August 2007.
She was 15 at the time of the incident in which Mr O Woiya was shot by a third party at his apartment in Dunboyne, Co Meath.
In the run-up to the incident, Craig had told her then boyfriend of four months, Joseph Sullivan, Ballyfermot Road, Dublin, that she had been raped at that address.
Sullivan reacted “outrageously” to the allegations and made contact with a third party in Dublin, in an attempt to sort the matter out himself.
On August 3rd, he drove Craig and the third party to the address at Dunboyne.
Craig became aware on the journey that the third party had a gun with him. The two men went to the door of the apartment and the third party fired blindly through the door, killing Mr O Woiya. The trial judge sentenced Sullivan to seven years and gave a suspended sentence to Craig.
The DPP, however, appealed against the leniency of the sentence. At the Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday, John Alymer SC argued that the trial judge had departed from the norm in the sentence he gave, which he said was “unduly lenient”.
He said the judge had not taken into consideration a number of facts, including that Craig had left her boyfriend “labouring under the impression that she had been raped” when two months after the killing, she withdrew her allegations entirely.
Ms Justice Fidelma Macken said the appropriate sentence was 3½ years, but with the final 2½ years suspended, and sentenced Craig to one year in jail.