Alan Freeman has final two years of sentence suspended on appeal

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

The Court of Appeal suspended the final two years of Alan Freeman's thirteen-year sentence. This reduced the seven-year theft term to five, consecutive to an activated six-year sentence. Mr. Justice Birmingham delivered the judgment on 26 June 2015. The proceedings were reported on 26 June 2015.

The suspension required a €100 bond covering peace and good behaviour for two years after his release from custody.

His trial began at Kilkenny Circuit Criminal Court on 5 February 2013 on charges of aggravated burglary, burglary and robbery under the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001. On 28 February 2013, the fifteenth day of trial, he pleaded guilty to an added theft count.

The case concerned a raid on a firearms dealer’s home outside Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, on 9 January 2009. Four raiders held the occupants for about four hours, tied them up and locked them in a firearm safe, taking 42 firearms, €800 and a car. The case against Freeman was that he passed information from his co-accused to the gang; he was never alleged to be one of the raiders.

Judge Desmond Hogan imposed an eight-year suspended sentence at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on 11 February 2008 for an armed bank robbery committed on 13 February 2004. Freeman had pleaded guilty. Six years were activated on 14 February 2014, with the final two years remaining suspended.

Freeman’s conviction appeal alleged that a senior garda’s meetings and telephone contact with him during trial abused the court process. A separate challenge to arrest, detention and interview evidence was not pursued. The DPP maintained that his guilty plea made it moot; Freeman tacitly accepted that the plea barred that challenge if the contact ground failed.

The court upheld the finding that the contact concerned matters unrelated to the trial. His lawyers had not advised a guilty plea, partly because they considered an arrest-validity argument substantial, although the court said a subsequent Supreme Court decision had significantly undermined it. The court found that he willingly engaged in the contact, had senior and junior counsel’s assistance and had not had his will overborne. The conviction appeal failed.

Although finding no error in the thirteen-year figure, the court applied totality and proportionality and suspended two years to provide an incentive against reoffending.