The Court of Appeal has set aside wholly suspended sentences imposed on Desmond Ryan and Edward Rooney for a heroin and cocaine offence and replaced them with three years’ imprisonment each, running from 19 January 2015.
The court allowed the Director of Public Prosecutions’ application under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993, which permits review of a sentence considered unduly lenient. It had announced after a hearing on 8 December 2014 that the application succeeded, then reserved its fuller reasons and the new sentences.
The case arose from a transfer in the early hours of 5 April 2012 at the White Horse Public House car park in Finglas. A holdall handed from Ryan’s truck to Rooney’s car contained 4,464 grammes of heroin, valued at €1.2 million, and 227 grammes of cocaine, valued at almost €16,000. Rooney admitted collecting the bag and said he did not know what drugs it contained. Ryan said he had initially believed he was delivering cigarettes, but later accepted he suspected drugs were involved.
Both men pleaded guilty in the Circuit Court in March 2013. In October that year, the sentencing judge imposed a 10-year sentence on each, suspended in full for seven years. Rooney was also ordered to take part in a restorative justice programme. The judge relied on mitigating matters including their pleas, remorse and low likelihood of reoffending.
The Court of Appeal accepted that there were significant mitigating features and said the sentencing judge was entitled to depart from the statutory 10-year minimum because imposing it would be unjust. The DPP did not challenge that decision. But the court found that the cases lacked the wholly exceptional circumstances required to justify suspending the sentences in full. It said the value and nature of the drugs, the men’s ages, financial motives and absence of addiction or coercion increased the seriousness of their culpability.
The court said imprisonment was required. It assessed five years as the appropriate sentence in light of the offences and the offenders, then reduced that to three years each to account for further material, the period the men had remained at liberty and the strain of facing sentence after the DPP’s successful application. It stressed that the result reflected the particular circumstances of these cases and did not indicate the appropriate sentence in other cases.