The Court of Appeal has replaced a five-and-a-half-year sentence for a cocaine offence with a 10-year prison term after allowing a Director of Public Prosecutions application to review the sentence as unduly lenient.
The court’s judgment, delivered by Birmingham P. on 29 July 2022, concerned an offence under section 15A of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977. The respondent had also received a concurrent sentence for a money-laundering offence. The Circuit Criminal Court imposed the sentences on 22 October 2021, following guilty pleas.
The offences arose from a Garda surveillance operation at Reiska, Kilcommon, Thurles, on 30 October 2020. Gardaí found cocaine and €37,000 in a buried barrel, with a further €339,550 in cash nearby. They detained the respondent as he approached carrying a bag containing cocaine. Analysis of the drugs seized found 9,229.9g of cocaine, with a stated street value of €646,093.
At sentencing, the judge considered the respondent’s early guilty plea, personal circumstances, addictions and vulnerabilities described in a psychologist’s report. He found that the respondent had a logistical role storing and controlling drugs, but was neither at the top nor the bottom of the organisation. The judge concluded that exceptional and specific circumstances meant the presumptive 10-year minimum would be unjust. He imposed five and a half years for the section 15A offence and four and a half years for money laundering, concurrently. In a separate section 99 decision concerning an earlier suspended sentence, he activated one year, consecutive to the drug sentence, for an effective total of six and a half years.
The Director argued that the statutory basis to depart from the 10-year minimum had not been established, citing the respondent’s role, prior drug convictions and the public interest in preventing drug trafficking. The respondent accepted that the sentence was lenient but argued it did not justify appellate intervention, relying on the plea and cooperation.
The Court of Appeal said the offending was particularly serious because of the quantity and type of drugs, the nearby cash, the respondent’s role and two prior section 15 convictions. It held that the original eight-and-a-half-year headline sentence for the drug offence was inappropriate and that a sentence in the range of 12 to 12-and-a-half years was warranted before mitigation. Even allowing the maximum benefit for the factors including the plea, the court said a sentence of at least 10 years would not have been unjust and a lower sentence would not serve the public interest.
The court quashed the Circuit Court sentence and substituted 10 years’ imprisonment, backdated to 30 October 2020. The one-year section 99 sentence was to run consecutively to the substituted sentence.