Judge calls for legislation over lack of clarity about power to review sentences on children

A High Court judge has said there is a need for legislation to address a lack of clarity concerning the courts’ power to review sentences imposed on children convicted of serious crimes.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt made the remark when adjourning to next month his decision on the sentence to be imposed on a teenage boy for the murder of a woman as she walked home from work in the early hours of the morning in Dublin city centre.

Now aged 16, the boy was aged 14 when he stabbed Urantesetseg Tserendorj, a 49-year-old Mongolian woman, on the night of January 20th 2021. The mother of two sustained severe injuries and died nine days later.

His trial heard the boy was out that night armed with a knife with the intent of robbing someone in order to feed his drug habit. A son of chronic heroin users, he was described as being on a “very significant amount” of drugs on the night of the stabbing.

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He cycled up to Ms Tserendorj on a walkway between George’s Dock and Custom House Quay, dismounted his bicycle and demanded money. When she told him she did not have any, he produced a knife from his pocket and stabbed her in the neck.

The DPP refused to accept his manslaughter plea and he was found guilty of murder by a 10/1 majority jury verdict last year following a second trial at the Central Criminal Court. At his first trial, the jury could not agree on a verdict.

Because he was a child at the time of the offence, the normal mandatory life sentence for murder does not apply to him.

During sentence submissions on Friday, Seán Guerin SC, for the DPP, outlined the sentencing options available under the law included detention for life, which he said was not required here, or a determinate sentence. There has been for some time a degree of uncertainty about the courts’ power to review either a life to a determinate sentence, he outlined.

The appropriateness of such review is “self-evident” in relation to children and has been judicially acknowledged but there is no statutory basis for it, he said.

Counsel referred to obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and noted reviews have been used in some cases involving children, including a teenager jailed for 11 years for the attempted murder, when aged 16, of a young woman at Dún Laoghaire baths in 2017.

In exchanges with counsel, Mr Justice Hunt said there was “plainly a need for legislation in this area”.

Michael O’Higgins SC, for the defence, said, given the boy’s age and the lack of clarity concerning the courts’ power of review, “a matter very shrilly crying out for legislation”, the boy’s preference was for a determinate sentence.

The issue of review was for the court to decide but his client does not want to get “caught between rock and a hard place” and wanted the best possible result.

He asked the judge to do his “level best” for the boy within the law as it is.

The Court of Appeal seems to have accepted there are particular obligations regarding the sentencing of children but, unfortunately from everyone’s perspective, has also said part of a period of detention imposed on a minor cannot be suspended, counsel said. Suspension would allow for controlled release back into society with supports.

The judge agreed the issues raised are important, adding he would “say no more than that”.

He will rule on sentence on February 13th.

Ulambayer Surenkhor, husband of Ms Tserendorj, was in court on Friday. In a victim impact statement last month, he spoke of her “irreparable loss” to him and their children.

He moved to Ireland from Mongolia 17 years ago and his wife followed nine months later. They worked as cleaners in Dublin and their children went to school here.

Mr Surenkhor said he and his family lived happily until this “terrible tragedy” but “now it is very hard to live.”

The judge heard the boy had written a letter to Mr Surenkhor saying he had never set out to hurt his wife.

The boy’s grandmother said Ms Tserendorj’s husband and children were in her family’s prayers..

She said her grandson had used to be sports mad, excelling at hurling and boxing, but changed after an encounter where his birth mother introduced herself to him on the street, asked for a hug and, when he said No and backed away, produced a Stanley knife and threatened to cut herself.

She had got several agencies involved but “nothing worked”, she said. “He would be awake at night crying and made three suicide attempts.”

The boy has 31 previous convictions, including for offences involving robbery, violence and drugs, the court heard.