THE COURT OF APPEAL
Birmingham J
Sheehan J.
Mahon J.
298/15
The People at the Suit of the Director of Public Prosecutions
Respondent
Appellant
JUDGMENT of the Court (ex tempore) delivered on the 7th day of October 2016 by
Mr. Justice Sheehan
1. This is an appeal against sentence.
2. On the 31st October, 2015, the appellant pleaded guilty to cultivating cannabis at an apartment in the centre of Dublin on the 8th May, 2014.
3. He was sentenced on the 30th November, 2015, to three and a half years imprisonment.
4. At the time of his arrest the police found him in possession of 126 cannabis plants at various stages of growth. It was accepted by the prosecution that the appellant had become involved in this offence to discharge gambling debts. The appellant told the gardaí that when the plants were harvested and packaged he expected to receive payment in the order of €10,000, but would in fact receive only a small portion of this sum as the balance was going to be retained in order to discharge his gambling debts.
5. At the time of sentence, the appellant had a previous conviction for a similar offence in Galway. This offence was committed when the appellant was on bail for the Dublin offence and at a time when he was apparently required to pay off a debt in respect of the cannabis plants that had been forfeited on his first arrest.
6. At the time of sentence he was serving a sentence of three years imprisonment with the final year of that term suspended.
7. The appellant, who is Chinese, is married with two young children and is now 35 years old. He had been living in Ireland for a period of eight years prior to his arrest, at which time his wife and children had returned to China.
8. It was contended on his behalf that the sentencing judge had imposed a sentence that was excessive in all the circumstances and unduly severe given the level of cooperation that the appellant had given to the gardaí and further that insufficient consideration had been given to his personal circumstances, in particular the fact that he was under coercion because of the gambling debts that he had built up.
9. The maximum sentence for this offence is fourteen years imprisonment. The sentencing judge was entitled to take into account the previous offence in Galway that the appellant had committed while on bail and to treat that as an aggravating factor. The appellant lent himself to a serious commercial operation and the fact that he may have done so in order to clear a gambling debt does not excuse him.
10. We do not consider that the sentence imposed by the learned sentencing judge was excessive. However, we are of the view that the appellant in this case should be given credit for the six weeks that he has already spent in custody solely in respect of this offence and with that one qualification we dismiss the appeal.
