A judge has imposed a six-year sentence for manslaughter, suspending the final year, on Mark Kinsella (27), of Whitestown Crescent, Blanchardstown, for killing his girlfriend's brother, Mr Thomas Fetherstone (38), of Tower View, Trim, Co Meath.
Kinsella, who passed out as best soldier of his platoon in the FCA, stabbed Mr Fetherstone, a lift engineer and former Jehovah's Witness, with a large kitchen knife at a house party in Corduff Avenue, Blanchardstown, on November 22nd, 1998.
In a short trial in December, a jury unanimously acquitted Kinsella of murder. However, it did not accept his case of self-defence and he was convicted of manslaughter.
Yesterday in the Central Criminal Court, Mr Justice Herbert told Kinsella that by sending Mr Fetherstone to a premature grave "you cut him off from his future, and from everything that he might have become and everything he might have accomplished".
He told Kinsella he had left a young woman widowed with three children. "You have broken her health."
He added: "You have left a mother and father with the agonising grief of having their firstborn predecease them."
Kinsella had "blighted the life" of his former girlfriend, Ms Therese Fetherstone, and their two children, the lives of Mr Fetherstone's family, as well as the lives of his own parents and family.
"It must be clearly understood by everyone in and coming into this State that such a crime will be punished by immediate and substantial imprisonment," he said.
He said that the appropriate sentence for Kinsella's crime would be eight years but the jury's verdict showed that it believed he did not intend to murder Mr Fetherstone.
Mr Justice Herbert also took into account that Kinsella had never before come to the attention of the Garda, his early plea to manslaughter and his co-operation with gardai.