Noble given 10-year sentence

Kelly Noble, the 21-year-old mother of two who stabbed another young mother-of-two to death outside a supermarket has been jailed for 10 years for her manslaughter.

Noble, from Seaview in Laytown, Co Meath, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of 19-year-old Emma McLoughlin, who was stabbed in the chest in Laytown, Co Meath on June 2, 2006.

But a Central Criminal Court jury found Noble guilty of her manslaughter on March 21 this year.

Mr Justice Barry White sentenced Noble today to 10 years in prison, with the final two years suspended.

He backdated the sentence to the date of her arrest, on June 2 last.

Noble bowed her head and put her hands to her face as sentence was read out.

In sentencing Noble, Mr Justice White said that because Noble raised the defences of both provocation and self-defence, he was obliged to sentence on the basis that the jury accepted the defence most favourable to her.

For this reason, he was obliged to accept the defence of self-defence.

However, he also said he would in future invite juries who have been offered both defences, to write on the issue paper the defence upon which they based their manslaughter verdict.

Mr Justice White had previously adjourned sentencing to get guidance on the sentencing of other women convicted of manslaughter.

However, he said this was not because women deserve lesser sentences than men and insisted they are equal in the eyes of the law.

He accepted Noble was shopping in her local supermarket with one of her two children when she was set-upon by the deceased, who hit her and accused her of kicking her in the stomach while pregnant.

He said that after the deceased was asked to leave the supermarket, Ms Noble failed to seek further help from staff, or call gardaí.

Instead, she called her friend and asked her to bring a knife and used it in the second altercation outside.

He said he did not accept the proposition posed by the defence that the knife was not carried as a weapon or that she did not mean to use it.

He noted Noble's remarks to a shop worker, telling her she intended to "slice her up".

He also noted Noble initially accused the deceased of bringing the knife to the scene, although she admitted the truth at a second Garda interview.

He said this case was therefore at the "upper end" of manslaughter cases and that an appropriate sentence would be 12 years.

While he accepted Noble's "appalling upbringing", he said sight was often lost of the fact that victims of crime were always someone's "mother or father, son or daughter, brother or sister."

He noted the devastating effect on the McLoughlin family whose victim impact statements were read out in court at the previous sentence hearing and said that a young family is now destroyed by the killing of their mother.

However he took into consideration a number of mitigating factors, including Noble's early guilty plea of manslaughter, that she now showed remorse, and that she was the mother of two young children. He also noted her own attempts to solve her drug problem.

It was on this basis that he reduced the sentence to 10 years, with the final two suspended.

Noble was also found guilty of a second charge of unlawfully producing a knife in the course of a dispute or a fight, in a manner likely to intimidate or inflict serious injury.

The judge said he was taking the second offence into consideration.

During the trial, the court heard how there was a "joint history" of previous altercations between the two girls and that Ms McLoughlin's attention deficit disorder meant she was easily enraged.

However, Sgt Seamus Burke said that while Ms McLoughlin did have a "troubled" background, she had commenced an early school leavers' programme in the months leading up to her death and was attending counselling.

"She certainly seemed to be doing much better as a result of that," he said.

The court also heard of Noble's troubled upbringing in Ballymun, when both of her parents were drug addicts and she was the victim of and the witness to severe violence.

After Noble's mother left the family home, Noble was enlisted by her father to sell counterfeit drugs to feed his drug habit.

In 2000, when Noble was 14 years old, her father was murdered.

Her mother, Jacqui Noble, is currently serving a life-sentence for conspiracy in relation to his death.

Noble was then taken into foster care, afterwards moving to a council house in Laytown, where she lived with her two children, whom she continues to see on a very regular basis.

After the sentencing, Ms McLoughlin's family did not wish to make any comment but their victim impact statements, read out during the previous sentencing hearing, described their trauma.

The deceased's father, Mr Thomas McLoughlin, described how the loss of his daughter has resulted in a "huge hole" in his heart, "a hole which can never be filled".

He said "only the beautiful memories" of her will get him "from day-to-day".

Her mother, Mrs Margaret McLoughlin, described the day Emma died as "the worst day" of her life.

"Not a day goes by without thinking of her or talking about her," she said. "I can never come to terms with the loss."