The Court of Appeal has increased Jordan Keogh’s overall sentence from six years to 11 years after finding that the original sentence for firearms and money-laundering offences was unduly lenient.
In a judgment delivered on 14 November 2023, the court allowed two applications by the Director of Public Prosecutions to review sentences imposed on four indictments. It quashed the original overall sentence and resentenced Keogh de novo. The court left unchanged the two-year sentence for possession of cannabis.
For the first money-laundering offence, involving about €123,000 found in a vehicle, the court substituted a six-year headline sentence and reduced it to four years. That sentence runs concurrently with the drugs sentence. The court took a count concerning possession of an encrypted mobile device into consideration.
For firearms offences, the court imposed concurrent five-year sentences for possession of a firearm and ammunition in suspicious circumstances. It accepted the sentencing judge’s seven-year notional sentence but declined to reduce the sentence below the statutory presumptive minimum of five years. The firearms offences were committed while Keogh was on bail, so those sentences run consecutively to the four-year sentence on the first money-laundering bill. The court said the original reduction for mitigation and totality had been too generous and left an effective six-month sentence for serious firearms offences.
For a second money-laundering offence, involving about €49,000 concealed in a vehicle, the court imposed a six-year headline sentence, reduced to four years. It took two further counts into consideration. Because this offence was also committed on bail, its sentence runs consecutively to the firearms sentence. The resulting total was 13 years before the court applied the principle of totality.
The court reduced the overall sentence to 11 years, lowering each money-laundering sentence to three years to reflect the gravity of all the offending. It suspended the final two years of the sentence on the last bill for two years from Keogh’s release.
The court acknowledged his guilty pleas, cooperation with gardaí, family support, educational difficulties, psychological vulnerabilities, remorse and rehabilitation efforts. It also considered evidence that he had faced threats and pressure linked to a drug debt. The judgment noted the seriousness of the offending, including the firearm concealed in a vehicle and the movement of substantial sums of money, and said the original overall sentence did not adequately reflect its seriousness.