Kelly Noble, the mother of two who stabbed another young mother of two to death outside a supermarket, has been jailed for 10 years for manslaughter.
Noble (21), Seaview in Laytown, Co Meath, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Emma McLoughlin (19), who was stabbed in the chest in Laytown, Co Meath, on June 2nd, 2006.
However a Central Criminal Court jury found her guilty of her manslaughter on March 21st this year.
Mr Justice Barry White sentenced Noble yesterday to 10 years in prison, with the final two years suspended. He backdated the sentence to the date of her arrest, on June 2nd last.
Noble bowed her head and put her hands to her face as sentence was read out.
In sentencing Noble, Mr Justice White said that because she raised the defences of both provocation and self-defence, he was obliged to sentence on the basis that the jury accepted the defence most favourable to her.
For this reason, he was obliged to accept the defence of self-defence.
However, he also said he would in future invite juries who have been offered both defences, to write on the issue paper the defence upon which they based their manslaughter verdict.
Mr Justice White had previously adjourned sentencing to get guidance on the sentencing of other women convicted of manslaughter.
However, he said this was not because women deserve lesser sentences than men and insisted they were equal in the eyes of the law.
He accepted Noble was shopping in her local supermarket with one of her two children when she was set upon by Ms McLoughlin who hit her and accused her of kicking her in the stomach while pregnant.
He said that after Ms McLoughlin was asked to leave the supermarket, Ms Noble failed to seek further help from staff, or call gardaí.
Instead, she called her friend and asked her to bring a knife and used it in the second altercation outside.
He said he did not accept the proposition posed by the defence that the knife was not carried as a weapon or that she did not mean to use it.
He noted Noble's remarks to a shop worker, telling her that she intended to "slice her up". He also noted Noble initially accused Ms McLoughlin of bringing the knife to the scene, although she admitted the truth at a second Garda interview.
He said this case was therefore at the "upper end" of manslaughter cases and that an appropriate sentence would be 12 years.
While he accepted Noble's "appalling upbringing", he said sight was often lost of the fact that victims of crime were always someone's "mother or father, son or daughter, brother or sister".
He noted the devastating effect the killing had had on the McLoughlin family whose victim impact statements were read out in court at the previous sentence hearing and said that a young family was now destroyed by the killing of their mother.
However, he took into consideration a number of mitigating factors, including Noble's early guilty plea of manslaughter, that she now showed remorse, and that she was the mother of two young children.
He also noted her own attempts to solve her drug problem.
It was on this basis that he reduced the sentence to 10 years, with the final two suspended.
Noble was also found guilty of a second charge of unlawfully producing a knife in the course of a dispute or a fight, in a manner likely to intimidate or inflict serious injury.
The judge said he was taking the second offence into consideration.