A 28-YEAR-OLD Irish man could spend up to a year in an Australian jail after being convicted of a drunken attack on a bouncer outside a Sydney pub.
Nine News reports that Diarmaid Dooley pleaded guilty to the charge of causing actual bodily harm to the bouncer at Scruffy Murphy’s pub in November 2013 but insists that he has no memory of the incident.
The judge sentenced to Dooley to a minimum of eight months in jail after viewing security footage of the attack which showed the Irish backpacker punching the bouncer in the face and kneeing him in the stomach.
Dooley’s lawyer told reporters reporters that his client was “devastated” by the incident and argued that it should be viewed differently to other assaults. “It was not an unprovoked king-hit on an innocent person”, he argued.
But Syndey Judge Jane Culver told the court that the sentence must act as a deterrent to prevent the growth of “drunken violence”:
This is a crime that involves intoxication and violence on the streets of Sydney. This court needs to send a message to the community that we can not tolerate this sort of drunken violence.
Dooley is to appeal the sentence and will appear in court again next month.
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