Shane McGowan attacker has sentence slashed by appeal court

Scaffolder from Kensal Rise wins reduction in jail term

A SCAFFOLDER who was jailed for punching Pogues singer Shane McGowan has won his appeal against a jail term for another assault.

Liam William McInerney, 30, of Chamberlayne Road, Kensal Rise, was jailed for three years in 2004, after breaking the Irish singer’s eye socket in a pub toilet in Belgravia.

The Criminal Appeal Court heard McInerney was again jailed, this time for four years, after assaulting his female flatmate in March last year and trying to blame it on another man.

He was convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and common assault, and pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice, at Harrow Crown Court in September last year.

Today (Friday), Mr Justice Roderick Evans, and Judge Gerald Gordon, sitting at London’s Criminal Appeal Court, cut that sentence to three years, after finding that the Crown Court judge had approached sentencing on an incorrect basis.

The court heard that McInerney, who left his victim with cuts to her face after pushing her into a mirror, had tried to blame the attack on someone else.

He had been cleared, however, of deliberately taking a piece of glass from the broken mirror and slashing the woman’s face.

His lawyers argued that, despite this finding in his favour, he had been sentenced as if he had committed that deliberate slashing of his victim.

Judge Gordon, giving the court’s judgement, allowed his appeal against sentence.

He said: “The judge sentenced on the wrong basis. We consider that the judge fell into error in adopting the basis for sentence that he did.

“The appropriate sentence was three years imprisonment and, to that extent, this appeal will be allowed.”