The Court of Appeal reduced Niall Hutton’s overall prison term from 18 years to 14 years after finding that the sentence did not give sufficient credit for mitigation and failed to apply the totality principle adequately.
The court set aside the eight-year sentence reactivated for an earlier Carlow drug offence and substituted a four-year term. It left in place a separate 10-year sentence for later drug offences, which it said was mandatory and had to run consecutively. The court directed that the four-year term be treated as commencing on 2 December 2013, with the 10-year term following it.
Hutton had pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine and cannabis for sale or supply after drugs were found in his Carlow bedroom in 2008. In 2009, he received a 10-year sentence, all of it suspended. Eight years were reactivated in December 2013 after he pleaded guilty to later offences involving the sale, supply and importation of drugs valued at €894,110.
Those later offences followed an operation involving parcels of synthetic drugs sent from abroad. The judgment said parcels addressed to a fictitious Waterford address were intercepted at Cork Airport in September 2012. Gardaí arranged a controlled delivery; Hutton took the parcels near his residence and was arrested nearby. A subsequent search of the residence found further drugs and related paraphernalia.
The appeal concerned whether the combined sentences were proportionate. The Court of Appeal said it could not interfere with the 10-year term imposed for the later offences because the statutory minimum applied to a second or subsequent offence. It could, however, reduce the earlier reactivated sentence to ensure the overall term was fair.
The court noted the sentencing judge had described the Carlow offending as at the lower end of the middle range and the later offending as at the lower end of the scale. It also considered Hutton’s addiction, cooperation with gardaí, personal circumstances and progress in prison. The court found an error of principle in the treatment of mitigation, while stressing that he could not expect to avoid a substantial sentence.
The court further directed that Hutton be brought before Waterford Circuit Court to have the 10-year sentence reviewed after he has served half of it, following completion of the substituted four-year term.