THE CORK man who raped a woman after previously serving a sentence for a double rape has now been jailed for 13 years by Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court.
This is the case in which Mr Justice Carney said last week he felt a life sentence would be more appropriate as “the female half of the population has a constitutional right not to be raped”.
David Hegarty (32) raped the Filipina nurse just two years after his release from a 10-year sentence imposed on March 4th, 2000 for raping two students in Cork city centre on October 5th and October 27th, 1998.
Hegarty, a father of one, with a former address at Nutley Road, Mahon in Cork pleaded guilty to orally raping the woman in the early hours of May 22nd, 2008 close to a Cork city centre bus station.
At a brief resumed hearing yesterday, Mr Justice Carney referred to the lengthy legal submissions he had heard from lawyers in the case on Friday last.
He noted that counsel for the State, Paul Coffey SC, and Patrick MacEntee for Hegarty, were agreed he was bound by the ruling of the Court of Criminal Appeal in the case of Gerard Kelly to impose a “proportionate and determinate sentence in accordance with the facts of the case”.
Mr Justice Carney had indicated he was inclined to impose a life sentence on Hegarty as he had in the Kelly case on January 22nd, 2007, “so that he (Kelly) would not be able to do the same again”.
Kelly (47), Moreen Avenue, Sandyford, who pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault of a woman on the night of September 17th-18th, 2004, had been jailed for 10 years on November 8th, 1999, and for eight years in England in 1987 for rape and aggravated burglary.
Mr Justice Carney said Hegarty’s crime on a defenceless woman in the early hours of the morning was “particularly predatory and opportunistic” and he had also received sentences previously for similar crimes.
“This raises inferences in my mind that he will do so again at the first possible opportunity and that the appropriate sentence is one of life imprisonment.”
Mr Justice Carney said that his life sentence on Kelly was set aside “in a fairly lengthy judgment” on July 31st last by the Court of Criminal Appeal presided over by Mr Justice Joseph Finnegan sitting with Ms Justice Maureen Clark and Mr Justice Daniel Herbert, which didn’t accept that the facts in the case were such as to merit life imprisonment.
The appeal court based its judgment on Kelly’s constitutional rights and substituted a sentence of 16 years with the final three suspended and also directed 10 years’ post-release supervision.
He noted the appeal court ruled that the sexual assault by Kelly “was not of such an exceptional nature that it merited the imposition of a life sentence”.
Mr Justice Carney had said a great deal of legislation was formed in gentler times and he might be right or wrong in thinking Hegarty might rape again.
“Has the female half of the population to accept that one or more of them might be targets because of a rapist’s constitutional rights?” Mr Justice Carney asked at last Friday’s hearing.
He said that in view of the Court of Criminal Appeal decision in the Kelly case, he would impose a 13-year sentence on Hegarty to date from his arrest and directed that he undergo 10 years’ post-release supervision.