DPP wins challenge to Cathal Murtagh’s five-year drugs sentence

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

The Director of Public Prosecutions successfully challenged Cathal Murtagh’s five-year drugs sentence in the Court of Appeal. The court, comprising the President, Peart J. and Sheehan J., found the sentence unduly lenient because of an error in principle. It invited updated material before imposing a replacement sentence.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court had imposed five years’ imprisonment on 6 March 2012 for an offence under section 15A of the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1977. Murtagh had entered an early guilty plea. The sentencing judge departed from the presumptive ten-year minimum, citing his plea, co-operation, good history, limited involvement and low remuneration. The proceedings were reported on 25 June 2015.

Customs officers investigating cigarette smuggling found Murtagh opening a unit on the Malahide Road on 20 April 2011. Cannabis resin, cannabis herb and MDMA tablets worth €3,582,778 were found between the unit and a van. Garda evidence recorded his account that he was hired for €50 or €60 a day to move and tape boxes. He said he discovered they contained drugs after some time, wanted to stop, but was told he could not walk away.

The DPP argued that the sentencing judge gave insufficient weight to the offence’s seriousness and the drugs’ nature, quantity and value, while giving excessive weight to mitigation. Murtagh argued that the judge had balanced the relevant factors and that increased imprisonment would be unjust nearly three years after sentencing, particularly as he had been on community release since September 2014.

The President held that the plea carried limited weight because Murtagh was caught acting as if in charge of the unit, and that his co-operation included false information. He found financial gain rather than addiction or coercion motivated Murtagh and doubted he misunderstood the operation. Nevertheless, the court accepted he was a minor player. Garda evidence conceded he lacked the means to establish the operation; he had no previous convictions.

The court accepted there was sufficient mitigation to depart from the ten-year minimum, but held that the circumstances generally required a higher sentence. Before deciding the term, it would consider any allowance for the anguish caused by further imprisonment.

This case may have concluded differently. The outcome has not yet been confirmed by a public source we could find.