A teenager who pleaded guilty last year to murdering his friend Glen “Ossie” Osborne has lost an appeal against the severity of a term of life imprisonment with a review after ten years.
Delivering the judgment of the Court of Appeal today Mr. Justice Seamus Woulfe said the offence was “very serious” and the initial trial judge was entitled to find that the bringing of the knife to the scene was a significant aggravating factor, “which meant that this was offending of such seriousness that it had to be met with a significant custodial sentence.”
He said the sentence imposed by Mr Justice Paul McDermott was “within the range of sentence available to the sentencing judge, given the serious offending involved.” While another judge might have imposed a different sentence, Mr Justice Woulfe said that for the Court of Appeal to intervene they would need to be convinced that the sentence imposed was outside the available range.
The 17-year-old who was sentenced in October, can’t be named because he is a minor. He pleaded guilty in August last year to the murder of 20-year-old Glen Osborne at Ballybough House, Ballybough, Dublin on April 15th 2020. Mr Osborne’s partner Lauren Cray gave birth to their first child two months after his death.
