The Court of Appeal has dismissed Zenarus Slipkus’s appeal against the severity of a three-year prison sentence for possessing heroin for sale or supply.
The judgment, delivered on 27 November 2018, said the sentence was imposed at Cork Circuit Criminal Court on 5 February 2018 after Slipkus pleaded guilty. The appeal court concluded that the sentence fell within the available range and that the Circuit Court judge had not erred in setting it.
The offence arose from Garda surveillance in the Blackrock area of Cork on 21 September 2015. Gardaí saw Slipkus travel from a house to a wooded area off Marine Walk. After he left, they found a glass container holding 65 individual bags of heroin, weighing about 14.1 grams and valued by Gardaí at €1,974. On the following day, Gardaí saw him remove a jar from undergrowth and arrested him.
The sentencing judge set a five-year headline sentence before mitigation and reduced it to three years. The appeal challenged the sentence as unjust, including the decision not to suspend any part of it. The appeal court said a prior suspended sentence for a Misuse of Drugs Act offence, and Slipkus’s failure to honour its condition that he leave the State and remain abroad for ten years, were relevant considerations.
The judgment said an investigating Garda accepted Slipkus was not directing the drugs operation and described him as being at the lower end, involved in street dealing. The court nevertheless considered the offence serious, noting the 65 separate bags, the recent relevant conviction and the unfulfilled suspended-sentence condition.
At the appeal hearing, counsel sought to introduce evidence that Slipkus had been diagnosed with medical conditions while in custody after the sentence hearing. The court received the material provisionally, although no motion for leave to adduce additional evidence had been brought. It said such information would usually be considered at the resentencing stage if an error in the original sentence had first been identified. The court was not persuaded that the medical information would necessarily have led to a significantly different outcome. Finding no error in the sentence, it dismissed the appeal.