A YOUNG man avoided a prison sentence in Athlone District Court this week after his father promised that his son would deliver a “lorry load of turf” to St Vincent de Paul as a community service alternative.
“You are just one sod of turf away from prison,” Judge Séamus Hughes told Martin Stokes (20), from Millbrook Drive, Monksland, Athlone, Co Westmeath.
He was pleading guilty to possession of a knife and the theft of a mobile phone from a handbag.
Last March the same defendant was before the same judge when he was convicted of a farmyard theft.
On that occasion Judge Hughes referred to the case of Pádraig Nally, the farmer who had shot dead a Traveller trespassing on his property.
Stokes was sentenced to 11 months’ detention, suspended for two years, for stealing from the Co Roscommon farmyard.
Judge Hughes said then: “It takes a Mayo man to put an end to that sort of thing. And I’m not talking about myself. I’m talking about the venerable Pádraig Nally.”
Recently Judge Hughes has inclined towards labour-intensive community service orders instead of jail when appropriate for non- violent offenders.
After Stokes’s latest conviction this week, the judge said: “I would prefer to send him to the Aran Islands, give him five hectares and tell him to pick all the stones, but unfortunately I’m not allowed.
“You just stay at home lying around, scheming about what you’re going to steal next,” said Judge Hughes.
“Do you have any suggestions in the line of hard work?” he asked Stokes’s solicitor Owen Carty.
After a brief adjournment, Mr Carty returned with his client and his client’s father, saying: “He can keep his son in gainful employment on a bog in Ballyforan, Co Roscommon,” and suggested a donation of turf to St Vincent de Paul as community service in lieu of prison.
Judge Hughes asked Stokes’s father how much could be donated, and he suggested “a lorry load”, and estimated this to be 100 bags.
Judge Hughes postponed finalising matters until July 20th in order to speak with the local head of St Vincent de Paul to see if this was a suitable community service order.