Man fails in appeal against life sentence

A man who tried to murder a 10-year-old girl "to see what it was like to kill someone" has lost his latest appeal over a life sentence.

Eric Daniels, aged 29, had asked the Supreme Court to decide whether the sentence imposed on him for the attempted murder of the child in November 2001 impermissibly constituted preventative detention.

Yesterday, a five-judge Supreme Court unanimously ruled it was not a preventative and was a proper sentence under Irish law.