The Court of Appeal has refused to increase the sentences imposed on three men convicted of offences arising from a cannabis grow house in Ballinlough, Kells, Co Meath. It also dismissed Choung Vu’s appeal against the severity of his sentence.
In a judgment delivered on 8 February 2016, the court dismissed the Director of Public Prosecutions’ applications under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993. It found that, although the sentences for Kham Tu and Tuan Cong Le were “very lenient”, they were not unduly lenient under the legal test. Vu’s sentence was not unduly lenient either.
The grow house was discovered during a Garda search on 6 June 2012. Officers found 126 cannabis plants, with a potential value of €100,800, and equipment including specialist lighting and fans. The court heard that Tu had rented the house under the name “Andy Lu”. Cong Le and Vu arrived during the search in a car containing further cultivation equipment. The three men were arrested.
Tu and Cong Le pleaded guilty to cultivating cannabis. Vu was convicted by a jury of possession for supply, possession and cultivation. In a separate appeal judgment in November 2015, the Court of Appeal overturned his convictions for the two possession offences but upheld the cultivation conviction.
At sentencing in July 2015, Vu received six years’ imprisonment, with the final three years suspended. Tu received four years, with the final two and a half years suspended, consecutive to a three-year sentence imposed the previous day for a separate cultivation offence committed while he was on bail. Cong Le received four years, with the final three years suspended.
The DPP argued that the sentencing judge had placed the offences too low on the scale of seriousness and had allowed too much for mitigation. The Court of Appeal said the judge’s full sentences reflected the seriousness of the offending before mitigation. It accepted that Tu’s four-year sentence was very lenient, but concluded it fell within the judge’s reasonable discretion given the need to make it consecutive and keep the overall sentence proportionate.
The court said Vu and Cong Le’s roles amounted to secondary participation on the evidence. Their headline sentences of six and four years were within the judge’s reasonable range, though the court identified an anomaly in giving them different headline sentences when the judge could not say Vu’s involvement was greater. It considered the allowance for mitigation appropriate for Cong Le and overly generous for Vu.
The court separately dismissed Vu’s appeal against severity. It said any error in the sentencing judge’s approach had not made the sentence ultimately imposed on him too severe.