Cork DJ caught with €1,400 cannabis after already being charged over €35,000 of drug

Judge said  aggravating factor in the case was that Cork man had already been charged with having €35,000 worth of the drug

Cork man said he did not drink alcohol but when he returned from a night working as a DJ he would smoke cannabis at home.

A Mallow-based DJ was caught with €1,400 worth of cannabis at a time when he was being prosecuted for an earlier incident where he had €35,000 worth of the drug.

Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin has now said that €1,400 was not a huge amount of drugs but the significance of the detection — and the aggravating factor in the case — was that he had already been charged with having €35,000 worth of the drug.

For the more serious charge, Garda Clodagh Walsh said at Cork Circuit Criminal Court that 43-year-old Gerald Sheehan, of 43 Connolly Avenue, Mallow, Co Cork, was jailed for four years in February.

The judge today said the offence of having more cannabis for sale when this case was pending meant the sentence on that charge had to be consecutive.

In effect, one year was added to Sheehan’s four years. The judge imposed a sentence of two years consecutive but with the last year of that new sentence suspended.

Garda Walsh testified that on August 14, 2018, the defendant’s home was searched under warrant and over €1,400 worth of cannabis was found.

When Sheehan was being sentenced for the €35,000 worth of cannabis, he claimed he was only supplying four or five adult friends, that he did not drink alcohol but when he returned from a night working as a DJ he would smoke cannabis at home. He had been smoking so long that he was both damaged by drugs and unable to go about rehabilitating, Judge Ó Donnabháin was told.

Judge Ó Donnabháin said during the sentencing hearing in February: “This is a somewhat sad case — a man at this hour of his life who is so committed to drugs he really does not know right from wrong. So addicted he cannot even offer himself for treatment. He is an almost total addict.”