The Court of Appeal has reduced the immediate prison term being served by Robert Lawlor for possessing cash stolen during an armed robbery at McDonald’s in Donaghmede Shopping Centre.
Lawlor had received 32 months’ imprisonment in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in July 2015 after pleading guilty to possession of stolen property. The appeal court replaced that sentence with 36 months, but suspended the final 12 months, leaving an effective two-year custodial term.
The case arose from a robbery on March 23, 2013, when about €10,000 was taken from a cash box at the Donaghmede restaurant after what was believed to be a firearm was produced. A tracking device led Gardaí to the emptied cash box in a field at Kinsealy later that day.
Three days later, Gardaí saw Lawlor in Belcamp Gardens, Darndale, placing a package through the letterbox of a house with which he had no connection. The package contained €3,420 in cash stained with blue dye. The money was traced to the stolen cash box.
The Court of Appeal stressed that Lawlor was being sentenced for possessing stolen property, not for carrying out the robbery. However, the circumstances in which the money had been stolen were relevant background to assessing the seriousness of the possession offence.
Lawlor had 125 previous convictions, including two previous convictions for possession of stolen property, as well as drug and endangerment offences.
The court nevertheless found limited merit in his appeal. It noted uncertainty about how much credit the Circuit Court had given for his guilty plea, the fact that another similar section 18 offence from around the same period had been dealt with separately, and the relatively wide difference between that earlier 16-month sentence and the 32-month term under appeal.
The suspended final year was imposed to encourage Lawlor to continue rehabilitation after release, subject to a 12-month good-behaviour bond.