The DPP is to appeal a three-year jail sentence given to a man who stabbed his partner repeatedly with a knife during a drunken assault in her home three years ago.
The vicious attack left the victim with potentially life-threatening injuries.
Lawyers for the DPP are to claim the sentence imposed on Keith Malone for the assault on his on-off partner Louise Karadag, which included the final three months being suspended, was unduly lenient.
Papers have been filed with the Court of Appeal to challenge the sentence handed down by Judge Mary O’Malley Costello at a sitting of Naas Circuit Criminal Court in January.
Malone, 39, of Barnashrone, Mountmellick, Co Laois, also pleaded guilty to a separate offence of producing a knife during the same incident which took place in Ms Karadag’s home in Athy, Co Kildare, on January 6, 2019.
Following the sentencing, which took place in the week Offaly school teacher Ashling Murphy suffered a violent death, Ms Karadag called for longer jail sentences to be handed down to anyone convicted of offences involving violence against women.
The 44-year-old was attacked by Malone during a row which broke out after the couple arrived back from a night out in a local pub.
The court heard Malone believed his partner was responsible for his friends deciding to leave the pub early where they had been drinking for several hours. Malone, who is the father of the youngest of Ms Karadag’s three children, a girl now aged three, threatened his partner before saying “I could stab you” before fetching a knife from the kitchen.
He then proceeded to stab her repeatedly in what the judge said sounded like “something you would see in a movie”.
In a victim impact statement, Ms Karadag described how she pleaded with Malone to stop the assault as she felt the blood rushing out of her body.
The court heard Malone replied: “Aw f**k, what are you after making me do to you?” Ms Karadag, who said she believed she was going to die and never see her children again, spent a total of 19 days in Naas General Hospital recovering from her injuries.
They included a damaged liver, collapsed lung, broken rib and gash to her elbow.
She claimed the incident was “the night life would change forever” and how returning home was “only the beginning of my nightmare” because of fears Malone would be waiting for her.
Following Malone’s two-year and nine-month jail term, Ms Karadag said sentences for anyone convicted of offences involving a violent assault on women should be harsher as current terms of imprisonment were “not acting as a sufficient deterrent”.
The case is expected to come before the Court of Appeal later this year.
