The Court of Appeal quashed the Circuit Court sentences imposed on Tomas Witkowski and Mariusz Sowa for a cannabis offence and substituted six years’ imprisonment for each. The sentences are to run from the same date as the original sentences.
The Director of Public Prosecutions had applied under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993 to review the sentences as unduly lenient. Both men had pleaded guilty to an offence under section 15A of the Misuse of Drugs Act. The Circuit Court had imposed seven years on each, with the final four and a half years suspended, subject to arrangements to leave Ireland before release and not return for 20 years.
The case arose from a Garda search of a rural residential property in County Carlow on 30 March 2018. Officers found 65kg of cannabis, valued at €1.3 million, in 77 packets, along with €21,440 in cash. The judgment said tractor tyres at the property had been used to bring the drugs into the country. The cannabis was removed, vacuum-packed and put into bags for distribution around Ireland.
The Court of Appeal said the Circuit Court judge erred by treating seven years as the headline sentence before mitigation. In the appeal court’s view, that starting sentence could not have been lower than the statutory presumptive minimum, and a higher starting point could have been justified. The court accepted that both men had mitigating circumstances, including early guilty pleas and no previous convictions. It also noted their time in custody and the difficulty of serving sentences away from family and support networks.
The appeal court said a sentence of seven to eight years would have been appropriate after full credit for mitigation. However, it reduced its intervention to six years because of the acute disappointment of increasing sentences after the men had expected release in February 2020, their constructive conduct in custody, and information about Sowa’s father’s medical condition in Poland. It considered a higher sentence for Witkowski but imposed the same term on both, citing their joint enterprise and common design.
The court also observed that the DPP should consider seeking priority when a sentence review may be heard after much of the sentence has already been served. It noted delays in obtaining the Circuit Court transcript had compounded matters in this case.