The Court of Appeal has dismissed Jaroslow Kilian’s appeal against the severity of sentences imposed by the Circuit Criminal Court in Dublin, leaving an effective sentence of eight and a half years’ imprisonment in place, with the final two years suspended.
In its judgment delivered on 21 February 2019, the court said the sentence was “lenient” and “very lenient”, and that a more severe sentence might have been imposed. It nevertheless confined itself to dismissing the appeal and did not increase the sentence.
The original sentences, imposed on 25 October 2017 across three bills of indictment, concerned possession and handling of stolen property, a drugs offence and related counts. The court said the effective aggregate term was eight and a half years, with the final two years suspended on condition that Kilian enter a bond to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for three years after release.
The appeal challenged both the level of the headline sentence and the prosecution’s account of Kilian’s position in an organisation involved in selling stolen cars. The defence argued he had been sentenced as though he had been close to the burglaries and thefts, although that was not apparent from the evidence.
The Court of Appeal rejected that ground. It said the sentencing judge had made clear that Kilian was not being sentenced as the person who stole the vehicles or committed the burglaries. But it accepted that people who dispose of stolen cars contribute to the resulting thefts and victims’ financial loss and distress.
The judgment recounted evidence about several vehicles. In February 2017, Gardaí monitored a silver Renault Clio with false registration plates in a Dublin car park. Kilian entered the car and was arrested. He had keys linked to an Audi and a Skoda. After questioning, he admitted involvement with vehicles and said he intended to sell them for an unnamed person. He later said he had used the Skoda while trying to sell it for that person.
The court also described a December 2016 incident involving a BMW advertised for sale online. Kilian met Gardaí posing as buyers, led them to the car in an underground car park in Ballymun and had access to it. The plates were false and the chassis number matched a different vehicle reported stolen.
The appeal court said the case involved sustained, repeated criminality at a commercial level. It dismissed the appeal without hesitation, but made no new sentence order.