The Court of Appeal increased Patrick Farrelly’s sentence for possessing drugs worth €66,700 from three and a half years to five years, after finding the original sentence unduly lenient. The final 18 months of the new sentence are suspended on conditions similar to those set by the sentencing court. The sentence runs from 25 November 2016 and remains concurrent with a separate 12-month sentence that was not under review.
The Director of Public Prosecutions brought the review under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993, arguing that the sentence imposed for the section 15A offence was unduly lenient. Farrelly had pleaded guilty and been convicted at Cork Circuit Criminal Court in February 2017. He was sentenced on 17 May 2017.
The drugs comprised cannabis valued at €59,496 and amphetamines valued at €7,024.50. The Court of Appeal judgment records the total as €66,700. The offence occurred on 26 November 2016, when gardaí searched Farrelly’s home at 8 Market Place, Stag Park, Mitchelstown, County Cork. He was arrested the next morning in Fermoy and made admissions about selling and supplying the drugs. He told gardaí that he owed a drugs debt of about €120,000 and was holding the drugs for another person.
Farrelly had also pleaded guilty to earlier drug offences committed about five months before the section 15A offence. Those offences involved drugs valued at €3,692 and resulted in a 12-month sentence, concurrent with the net two-year term imposed for the section 15A offence. The earlier sentence was not part of the DPP’s application, and Farrelly had not appealed it as too severe.
The appeal court accepted the DPP’s outline of how courts should approach the presumptive minimum 10-year sentence for section 15A offences. It nevertheless concluded that the sentencing judge had properly exercised discretion to go below that minimum because of exceptional and specific circumstances. The appeal court said the judge appeared to have placed the offence in the lower category of the gravity scale.
The court held, however, that the sentence under review, including the decision to make it concurrent with the earlier sentence, was unduly lenient. It said the sentencing judge was entitled to choose concurrent terms, but that the section 15A sentence needed to be more severe while remaining concurrent. In setting the new term, the appeal court considered the mitigating factors and Farrelly’s certificates and achievements while in custody. It did not alter the separate 12-month sentence.