The first man convicted by a jury in the state of forcible control has appealed his 10-and-a-half-year sentence for repeatedly violently assaulting, threatening and intimidating his partner’s life by creating a ‘horror show’, reports Breaking News.
During a 20-month relationship, Daniel Kane (54) repeatedly assaulted the woman, including burning her leg, slashing her face with a pizza slicer, headbutting her while she was recovering from nose surgery, and punching and kicking her.
This included banging her arm causing multiple fractures.
On another occasion, he stepped on her head and strangled her, leaving fingerprints on her throat. After pleading guilty to the attacks and being held in custody, Kane threatened to send explicit photographs of her to her family if she did not withdraw the case, reports Breaking News.
At the Court of Appeal on Tuesday, Kane’s lawyer, Padraig Dwyer SC, said his client was appealing the length of his cumulative sentence, telling the three-judge court it was “excessive”.
The lawyer said that while there was no evidence of remorse at the time of the trial, Kane was now remorseful and had written a letter to the woman but had not sent it to her.
Mr Dwyer said his client had a serious alcohol problem and had been hospitalized occasionally and suffered from depression and had made “variety” suicide attempts.
The Counsel said Kane was a carer for his aging parents and had attended a residential facility for alcoholism, reports Breaking News.
Mr Dwyer said that if the complex sentence structure was taken as a whole, the trial judge should have given his client more leeway for a man who appeared before him in his fifties and who was “generally of good character”, reports Breaking News.
The attorney said the defense implicated the abuse in alcohol, but emphasized that Kane was sober and in prison when he exerted “continued coercive control and dominion” over the woman through 250 phone calls.
In those calls, the lawyer said, Kane attempted to pervert the course of justice and intimidate a witness by threatening to send intimate photos of her to her family and withdraw from the case.
In her victim impact statement, the woman told the court she “might be dead or in a vegetative state” if doctors and guards had not taken steps to remove her from the Kane, reports Breaking News.
In sentencing after the trial, Judge Elma Sheehan said Kane did not take the opportunity to apologize to the victim or express regret for his actions.
Judge Sheehan noted that during the trial, counsel for the accused was instructed to suggest to the victim during cross-examination that she was “she was prone to hysteria”, reports Breaking
News.
She said that the attacks would have continued if not for the doctor’s intervention. She said the victim remained “remained beholden” to the defendant. She said that his repeated assaults as well as profanity and abusive language all served to “maintain his control” over her, reports Breaking News.
Judge Sheehan said the attacks were aggravated by the occurrence of the attacks in the victim’s home, the frequent nature of the crime, the fact of the close relationship, the victim’s level of fear, and her psychological vulnerability.
She noted as aggravating factors that Kane was on bail on other charges when he committed the crime of intimidation and had already been charged with intimidation when he attempted to pervert the course of justice, reports Breaking News.
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