Just to elaborate on Fatima’s post below, in fairness: Most Irish law and jurisprudence operates on precedents and rulings from the superior courts when it comes to sentencing. This is never more true than in the area of “mitigation”.
So for example, in child porn (or child abuse imagery, to use the proper term, cases) sentencing and mitigation is covered by the 2006 case of DPP versus Loving (which I wrote about in detail here) which clearly sets out the criteria for a suspended sentence – first time offender, material at the “lower end of the scale”, sincere remorse, etc. If you meet those criteria, the Judge is basically obliged by precedent to give you a suspended sentence.
This is true of most crimes. So when a barrister is telling a court that his client had a hard childhood or has kids to feed or is going through a hard time or whatever, it’s not necessarily a “sob story”. Often they are trying to hit specific legal points which the Judge has to consider in his sentencing, knowing that these can later be raised on appeal if the Judge ignores them.
Bottom line: Don’t go into court without a good barrister who knows what he is doing.
J.