A Kilkenny man who was accused of fracturing his friend's skull with a rock and burning his legs in a fire was today given a suspended sentence.
Thomas O'Grady (24), had been drinking in a field outside Kilkenny city with Paul Barry (34), in October 1999 when an argument broke out between them.
At the Central Criminal Court, Judge Henry Abbott imposed a six-year prison sentence for the offence of assault causing harm. But he gave him credit for serving nearly three years in prison before the trial and suspended the remaining three years.
"It's time to give this person a chance to reform and rehabilitate," he said.
The court heard that O'Grady, from Fatima Place in Kilkenny, had been sexually abused at the age of ten by a man who was given a four-year sentence in 2000. He had also been abused while attending a State institution and had grown up under two alcoholic parents.
O'Grady, who was 18 at the time, was drinking with Mr Barry and other men at a place on the outskirts of Kilkenny city known as Danny Mac's field. He was found not guilty by a jury last October of dragging Brady into the fire and setting his legs alight.
The victim was found half naked by ambulance staff and later had to have both his legs amputated.
Judge Abbott said the victim had sustained a fractured skull and a blood clot during the assault, and that although they were serious injuries, they were not of the most serious kind compared to the leg injuries.
"It was a gratuitous attack on a person who was a friend of his. It hasn't been advanced that there was any provocation or aggravation or some excusing circumstance for the event to occur."
O'Grady was originally found guilty of two counts of the attempted murder of Barry at a trial in 2000, but this verdict was overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeal, which directed a retrial.
Mr Barry, who attended the two-week trial last October in a wheelchair, is living in Kilkenny with his parents and was not present for the verdict.