Man who fatally stabbed Joe had 72 convictions
Robert Devine: jailed for 10 years
A man with more than 70 previous convictions was given a 10-year prison sentence after he entered an “eleventh hour” plea to the manslaughter of a young Waterford man at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin on Monday.
Robert Devine, 33, of Wheatfields, Clonmel, Co Tipperary, was jailed for the manslaughter of Joseph Cummins in Waterford city over two years ago.
The court heard how Mr Cummins of the Willows, Clarinwood, Tramore, was stabbed in the leg and fatally in the chest on November 24th, 2007, after he’d spent the night in the company of his older brother and Devine at the accused’s rented house in Lower Grange.
Det Sgt Anthony Pettit told the court that the three men spent the previous evening drinking and taking cocaine at Devine’s house. Devine claimed to gardaí that he’d wanted to clear the house the following afternoon but Cummins refused to leave. He went to the kitchen to get a knife to show him he was serious.
According to the accused, Cummins kicked out and he stabbed him in the leg. Another confrontation ensued in the kitchen and that was when the deceased received the fatal stab wound.
The detective said it appeared Devine washed the knife and threw it into an overgrown part of the back garden, before calling an ambulance. Medical crew tried to resuscitate Mr Cummins at the scene but he died shortly afterwards in Waterford Regional Hospital.
Devine was originally charged with murder, but pleaded guilty to manslaughter plea prior to the trial’s scheduled start date in December. His 72 previous convictions included several for assault and one for possession of a knife.
In a statement read to the court by his defence counsel, Devine said he never meant to stab Joseph Cummins in the chest. The situation got out of control very quickly and he was sorry for what he did. He took the life of a young man and he said nothing he could say or do could change that. He would always hate himself for what he had done.
The court heard that Mr Devine said he had become paranoid because of the drugs and drink he had taken.
Mr Justice Barry White said he agreed with the DPP that the offence was at the higher end of the manslaughter scale and that’s why he was sentencing him to 10 years, backdated to January 2009.
The judge added that he was “strongly of the view that deterrent sentences are necessary in the hope that they reduce the occurrence of stabbings”, and asserted that “sufficient of my colleagues do not share my view.”
“Life in certain areas seems to have become very cheap, if not reduced to the level where there is no value placed on life,” he said, saying he was taking into account Devine’s “eleventh hour” change of plea and expression of remorse.
However, the deceased man’s family said that the sentence wasn’t severe enough – though they accepted the judge’s “hands were tied.”
Reacting afterwards, Mr Cummins’s father said that while the judge “did his best… 10 years is not enough for knife crime… There’s new families here every week. Every week there will be someone here in my place… the sentences are just not enough.”
His son Joe was a nice, popular lad who loved his music and sport, and was a hard worker. “He didn’t deserve to die like that”, he said. “It’s with us for the rest of our lives. We’re never going to forget Joseph. We have to pick up the pieces.” Surmising the 10 years will be a lot less with remission, Mr Cummins added: “He’ll come out of jail and he’ll have his life, but my son won’t have his.”
In their victim impact statement, the Cummins family said: “God only knows how far he would have gone in life, we will never know.”
They told how they had been buying Joseph Christmas presents when they got the news he was dead. The next day they were buying a coffin.
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February 7th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
10 years, the judge is having a laugh,Jail without limit of time, would no doubt see that toe rag behind bars for a very long time, perhaps a year for every conviction