South African 'drug mule' has sentence halved

The Court of Criminal appeal has halved the seven-year prison sentence imposed on a South African 'drug mule' and mother of three who was caught with almost €80,000 worth of cannabis in her suitcase at Dublin Airport.

Last March, Sasha Lee Whitehead (aged 34), a legal secretary and divorced mother of three children, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to being in possession of the drugs worth €79,536 for sale or supply at the Airport on June 11, 2007. She was sentenced to seven years in jail by Judge Desmond Hogan.

She appealed against the severity of that sentence. Moving the appeal Ms Isobel Kennedy SC said that the sentencing judge had failed to take into account her client's "tragic and difficult" background, her remorse and her "high vulnerability," before imposing the seven-year sentence.

Ms Kennedy said her client had got involved in the venture because she was in "dire financial circumstances" at the time and was heavily in debt.

Counsel for the DPP had argued that the sentence imposed was typical of those given to those jailed for carrying drugs into the state.

Today the three-judge Court of Criminal Appeal, consisting of Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns presiding, sitting with Mr Justice Declan Budd and Ms Maureen Clark, reduced Whitehead's sentence from one of seven years to one of three years and six months.

Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns said that while the court could not condone Ms Whitehead's action as a "drug mule", however, given the her background circumstances, a "sympathetic view was required".

The court noted that Whitehead got involved in this venture because of financial difficulties in trying to provide for her three children as well as having to care for her sick mother.

Whitehead, of Singati Sands, Sunninghill, Johannesburg, had come to Ireland from South Africa via Madrid when she was stopped by custom and excise officers.

She said she had been paid €2,000 to carry "something" in her suitcase and she did not know that it was cannabis, but she later told gardai­ she suspected it was drugs.