Court of Appeal replaces Jason Tuthill’s fully suspended sentence with five years, half suspended

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

The Court of Appeal quashed Jason Tuthill’s original three-year fully suspended sentence and resentenced him to five years, with the final two and a half years suspended. Tuthill, 51, will serve two and a half years in prison. The court found the reduction from an eight-year headline sentence to three years excessive and said fully suspending the sentence to keep him in the community was an error in principle.

Tuthill had pleaded guilty to possessing 17kg of cannabis and 3kg of cannabis herb at a business campus in Athy on April 27, 2023. The court noted that the drugs were worth close to €400,000 and assessed his culpability as very low. It also considered evidence that he and his family had been threatened, and that he had cooperated with gardaí.