The Court of Appeal has refused a Director of Public Prosecutions application to review a five-year sentence imposed on Alyn Maginn for a drugs offence, leaving in place the sentence suspended except for the time he spent in custody before sentencing.
The DPP brought the application under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993, arguing that suspending the whole sentence was unduly lenient and manifestly inadequate. The court delivered judgment on 25 January 2019.
Maginn was sentenced in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on 23 February 2018 after pleading guilty to an offence under section 15A of the Misuse of Drugs Act. The case concerned drugs found in a car at Dublin Airport on 19 July 2017. The judgment records 4,226.8 grams of heroin, valued at €591,752, and 240.475 grams of cocaine, valued at €16,833.
The sentencing judge was told that Maginn had been sitting in the car minding the drugs for their owner. The judge considered his role in the scheme to be low and found that he had limited ability to resist requests from the owner, whom he regarded as a friend. The owner later accepted responsibility for the drugs and received a seven-year sentence in a separate case.
The judge also considered a psychologist’s report that concluded Maginn met the diagnostic criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder. The report and evidence about his behaviour during Garda interviews informed the judge’s assessment of his personal circumstances and culpability.
For the DPP, counsel submitted that the case lacked the rare and wholly exceptional circumstances needed to justify a non-custodial sentence. Maginn’s counsel argued that the sentencing judge’s first-hand observations of him and knowledge of the other man deserved significant weight.
The Court of Appeal described the case as unusual, citing ambiguity about Maginn’s role and the combination of factors relating to the offence and the offender. It said a wholly or almost wholly suspended sentence for this type of offence would remain highly unusual and was unlikely to provide a useful comparator in future cases. However, it held that the circumstances allowed the sentencing judge to reach the decision he did and that his approach was not impermissible. The court refused the DPP’s application; it did not alter the sentence.