A 21-year-old man has been jailed for manslaughter in progressive Ireland after he killed a violent home invader as a teenager.
Dean Kerrie has been sentenced to three and a half years behind bars, with one further year suspended, after being found guilty of manslaughter.
The sentencing has generated significant controversy both in Ireland and abroad, with one local publication branding the decision to jail the man — who was only 17 at the time of the incident — as disgraceful.
According to a report by the Irish Independent, the then-teenager is said to have stabbed 25-year-old Jack Power after the man broke into his home with a rock during the early hours of July 26, 2018.
With Power said to have been drinking at the time, the court heard that the man proceeded to attack Kerrie in his bedroom, with it also being suggested that Power was also looking to attack Kerrie’s mother as well.
Kerrie claims to have then located a knife at the side of his bed, with which he stabbed Power, though Mr Justice Paul McDermott said that he doubted Kerrie’s telling of events in this regard.
While taking into account that Kerrie had been attacked in his own home by an older man with a stockier build, and that Kerrie had expressed much remorse for the incident, Justice McDermott went on to say that the force used by Kerrie was “excessive”.
The judge justified this statement by claiming that Power, despite his build, was unarmed.
While the judge claimed that Kerrie’s sentence was lenient considering that an adult under similar circumstances would face a headline sentence of seven years, others both in Ireland and abroad have expressed frustration at the decision to jail Kerrie.
“It is very easy for Judge McDermott to sit, after the event, and pronounce that the force used was excessive. He was not there, after all,” John McGuirk, a pundit for Irish media site Gript, wrote in an opinion piece on the “disgraceful sentencing”.
Meanwhile, former Brexit Party MEP Martin Daubney compared the case to that of Manzoor Akhtar, a grooming gang member who was sentenced to just over four years in jail for raping a 13-year-old child.
“Ever get the feeling the judiciary is on the side of the criminals?” he asked, contrasting the two sentences, which occurred in two different legal jurisdictions that both operate under a similar common law system.