The Court of Criminal Appeal allowed Kieran Ryan’s appeal against an eight-year sentence for possessing a firearm and ammunition in suspicious circumstances, but did not set a replacement sentence. It said it would hear further submissions on the appropriate sentence, including any material about Ryan’s conduct in prison.
Ryan had pleaded guilty to the two offences, which arose from events at Carrickmartin, Co. Limerick, on 26 May 2010. The firearm was a Browning semi-automatic pistol. Evidence described Ryan as one of four people in a car that stopped by a field. After occupants searched undergrowth, Ryan pointed to a spot inside a fence. A package containing the gun and ammunition was recovered and later found in the car. Ryan told gardaí he believed the package contained a gun and was collecting it for someone else. He said he was to be paid €500 and would not identify the person, saying he was afraid.
At sentencing, the judge said a sentence of 12 years would have been considered without mitigation, but imposed eight years after taking account particularly of Ryan’s early guilty plea. The judge also considered Ryan’s previous conviction for violent disorder, which had been linked to a Limerick feud. The sentencing judge expressly said there was no basis to conclude that the firearm possession in this case was connected to that feud, and disregarded challenged hearsay about such a connection.
On appeal, the court reviewed earlier firearms sentencing decisions and gave broad guidance: absent exceptional and specific circumstances, offences at the lower end of the range would generally attract five to seven years before mitigation, those in the middle seven to 10 years, and those at the top 10 to 14 years. The court stressed that these ranges were guidance, not a fixed tariff, and that individual circumstances must be considered.
The court said the offence involved a significant firearm and circumstances indicating a degree of criminality, but there was no evidence Ryan intended to use it and it was not used. It considered that a starting point above nine to 10 years could not be justified. It also found the four-year reduction for mitigation excessive, given Ryan’s prior serious conviction and the limited mitigating factors identified. The court said a reduction of no more than two to two-and-a-half years was justified.
Although the errors partly offset each other, the court found the starting-point error sufficiently significant to amount to an error in principle. It allowed the appeal and ruled that eight years was excessive. The final sentence remains undetermined pending further submissions.