An accountancy student who was due to sit his final exams next month has been jailed for three years for slashing a man's face with two beer glasses.
Thomas Maloney (20), of Fairview Strand, Marino, Dublin, was refused a stay on the start of his sentence by Judge Cyril Kelly so that he might sit his exams.
Judge Kelly said he was going to make sure Maloney spent 12 months in prison by suspending the final years of it. He noted the flesh was left hanging off the victim's face after Maloney followed him out of a pub and viciously attacked him with two beer glasses. The victim got up to 60 stitches in an operation which lasted almost four hours.
Maloney pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to wounding Mr James O'Flaherty, on Wexford Street, Dublin, on November 28th, 1996.
Judge Kelly said the court could not tolerate people leaving public houses carrying glasses with the intention of maiming or disfiguring. "This was a cowardly act in which the defendant intended to cause the maximum damage possible."
Judge Kelly added that alcohol was a drug and it could be abused. Maloney's attack on a fellow student followed a verbal altercation in the pub and he could not be treated any differently to others who carried out crimes through drug abuse.
"The defendant has brought about the situation on himself whereby he might not be able to sit his examinations and the court cannot be blamed for that. I am satisfied he had plenty of time to reconsider his planned action when he left the pub and followed his victim before slashing him." Judge Kelly rejected an application by Mr Cormac Quinn, defending, for leave to appeal sentence but granted Maloney legal aid so that he might seek a hearing from the Court of Criminal Appeal.