In a recent High Court case an invocation of Article 40.1 of the Constitution of Ireland was successful and a law was found unconstitutional. The law in question provided that if a child convicted of murder was sentences after their 18th Birthday, they would be sentenced as adults and face the mandatory life sentencing. This law would apply without considering the age of the convicted at the time of committing the crime but put the emphasis on the time of sentencing. A team of lawyers took on the case on behalf of two teenagers accused of murder who subsequent to the alleged crime turned 18.
The applicants alleged that the law violated Article 40.1 of the constitution, which provides that all citizens shall be held as equal before the law, while allowing the state to have regard for differences of capacity, physical and moral. The applicants contesting the legislation contend that a distinction on a juvenile offender’s age as of the date of sentencing as opposed to their age of the date of the commission of the offence does not advance a legitimate legislative purpose.
The High Court considered the differing treatment to otherwise similarly situation juvenile offender depending on their age as of the date of sentencing. A juvenile offender who has “aged out” prior to the date of sentencing falls to be sentenced as an adult, with the consequence that there is a mandatory life sentence in the case of murder, and found that it is contrary to Article 40.1 as the two juvenile offenders, despite having the exact same legal facts are treated differently and therefore found the law to be unconstitutional. The High Court declared that judges should be allowed to consider age and maturity as mitigating factors when children commit murder, regardless of how old an accused it at the time of sentencing. Juvenile offenders who are sentenced prior to turning 18 have faced a wide range of sentencing, up to life sentences.