A young woman heroin addict, jailed for nine years for stealing a tourist's handbag containing £10,000 cash and jewellery, had her sentence reduced to six years by the Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday.
Sabrina Walsh (20), of Coultry Road, Dublin, had appealed to the court against the severity of the sentence.
On June 30th, Walsh pleaded guilty at the Circuit Criminal Court to stealing the handbag owned by an English tourist at Cafe en Seine, in Dawson Street, Dublin, in December 1997. She had six previous convictions for larceny.
The court imposed a nine-year sentence and said it would review that sentence in 2000.
At the Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday Mr Fergal Foley, for the young woman, said Walsh was not aware of the value of the contents of the bag.
Mr Justice O'Flaherty, presiding, said bag snatching was like a "cancer" in society and had to be stamped out. The court was sending the word out "loud and clear" that people involved in handbag snatching would get exemplary sentences from now on.
Handbag snatching created infinite disruption and victims would have to be protected, the judge said. When a handbag was snatched, people lost their money, house keys, car keys and credit cards.
Counsel for Walsh had submitted that the sentence imposed on his client had been vastly disproportionate to the offence and was just one year less than the maximum which could be imposed for simple larceny.
When the case was before the Court of Criminal Appeal earlier this year, it had been submitted that the bag had been taken from the floor of the restaurant and that there was no way Walsh was aware of who owned it.
Mr Foley said yesterday that the review was conditional on Walsh having her drug problem treated. However, she had a very serious problem, counsel stated.