The Court of Appeal dismissed Anthony and Gerard Kelleher’s appeals against their convictions and prison sentences for offences under section 15A of the Misuse of Drugs Act.
The cousins were convicted after a trial in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on 8 November 2016. Gerard Kelleher was sentenced to 12 years in prison for two offences involving separate quantities of drugs. Anthony Kelleher received 10 years for one offence. The appeals court dealt separately with the conviction and sentence appeals, dismissing both.
The convictions arose from Garda surveillance at Swiftwood Estate, a gated community near Citywest, on 7 December 2012. The court summarised evidence that Karl Byrne, referred to as KB during the trial at the defence’s request, arrived at the estate and met Gerard Kelleher at No. 3. Garda evidence was that Byrne later loaded ten boxes from the property into a van. The van was stopped and the boxes contained 20.5kg of cannabis, which the trial court was told was worth €413,260.
About an hour and a half later, Gardaí observed both appellants at No. 3 loading seven boxes into a transit van. Those boxes also contained cannabis, valued at €276,000. The court also referred to evidence including keys, fingerprints, phones and text messages. It noted that the surveillance officers had not known either appellant before that day.
The only ground pursued on the conviction appeal concerned more than €13,000 found on Anthony Kelleher. The appellants argued that the cash evidence was irrelevant or confusing and that the trial judge had not adequately directed the jury. The Court of Appeal held that the cash could be admitted as circumstantial evidence and that the jury would have understood it was not positively linked to drug activity. It also said the issue had not been challenged in the trial judge’s summing-up and no correction had been requested at trial. The court considered the cash’s significance limited beside the surveillance and other evidence, and was not persuaded that either conviction was unsafe or the trial unsatisfactory.
The court also rejected the sentence appeals. It upheld the sentencing judge’s conclusion that there was no basis to depart from the statutory presumptive minimum. The court cited Gerard Kelleher’s two convictions and significant previous conviction, and the evidence of Anthony Kelleher’s involvement, including phone traffic. It concluded there had been no error of principle and that the sentences were not inappropriate.