Appeal court finds Anthony Lyons sentence too lenient

The aviation broker had five-and-a-half years of a six year sentence suspended last year after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a 27-year-old woman.

Updated 9.45pm

THE DIRECTOR OF Public Prosecutions has been successful in its appeal against the leniency of the sentence handed down to businessman Anthony Lyons.

Lyons, an aviation broker, had five-and-a-half years of a six-year sentence suspended last year, after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman near Griffith Avenue on Dublin’s northside in 2010.

He was also ordered to pay the 27-year-old victim €75,000 in compensation.

Although he admitted to the attack, Lyons mounting a defence on the basis that his actions were a result of a mixture of medication and alcohol.

The sentence was criticised by a number of organisations at the time, including the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, which called it “unusual”.

Senior Counsel Caroline Biggs, on behalf of the DPP, argued that too much emphasis had been placed on the order of compensation when the sentence was handed down.

She told presiding judge John L. Murray that the judge had “attached a particular significance to that order,” and argued that the six month jail sentence did not reflect the seriousness of the offence.

The Court of Criminal Appeal ruled shortly before 4pm that the sentence imposed was too lenient, citing an “error in principle”. No further reasons were given.

The matter is to come back before the court for future hearings.

This article was originally posted at 1.55pm