Suspended sentence for Longford woman who hid €40,000 worth of cannabis in graveyard

A woman charged with possession for sale or supply of over €40,000 worth of cannabis hidden in the abandoned church of a cemetery, has been given four years in prison, with the sentence suspended in its entirety for seven years.

“Ahh, for f**k sake, Brian!” were the words shouted at Garda Brian Carroll when he caught Deborah Doyle (36), of 5 Congress Terrace, Longford, redhanded collecting drugs from an abandoned church at Moydow graveyard in December 2020.

Ms Doyle appeared before Judge Kenneth Connolly at Longford Circuit Court, where evidence was heard of the €40,688 worth of cannabis that Ms Doyle was found with on the morning of December 8, 2020.

Gda Carroll, in evidence, told the court that an operation was put in place after the drugs were found concealed in the graveyard. At 10.20am on the morning in question, he and Garda Mick Fox observed Ms Doyle entering the graveyard.

Gardaí watched her enter the old abandoned church on the site and descend a set of steps into a basement area, which was blocked up.

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“We observed her going down and we went to the steps and observed her at the bottom of the steps with a vacuum-packed bag of cannabis in one hand and a box knife in the other,” said Garda Carroll.

“I called her name and she turned around and said ‘ahh for f**k sake, Brian!’ She knew it was us.”

He told the court that there were three bags of suspected cannabis found at the bottom of the steps - one of which had been sliced open. These were seized, along with a stanley knife and Ms Doyle was arrested.

When questioned by Gardaí, Ms Doyle said she hadn’t been to that location before and that she had pulled up outside in her Opel Insignia car and entered the cemetery. She didn’t visit a grave.

She denied the drugs were hers and said she was collecting them for someone, with the intention of dropping them off somewhere on the Ardagh Mountain.

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When asked about who she was collecting the drugs for and where exactly she was dropping them off, she said “I’m not telling you, Brian, I’m not going to be threatened by them”.

She told Gardaí she was wearing rubber gloves because Gardaí have her fingerprints on file, and that she was getting €500 for “each see-through bag of weed”, meaning she was due to receive €1,000 that evening, with which she would “pay a few bills”.
In a second interview, she denied being in possession of the knife and told Gardaí they would find no evidence of drug dealing on her phone.

She also denied any intention of bringing the drugs back to her own home with intent to “bag up for sale and supply”.

Ms Doyle pleaded guilty to the possession of the cannabis, but disputed a charge of possession of a knife that was also before the court. The stanley knife, however, was presented as evidence by the prosecution and photos of it at the location were in the book of evidence.

Judge Kenneth Connolly accepted that the photos in the book of evidence placed the Stanley knife at the scene and said that, following the evidence of Garda Carroll, he was left without any doubt that the knife was at the scene and used to slice open one of the bags.

“I don’t believe I can speculate on the function of the knife. I spend half my life telling juries not to speculate, so I can’t speculate myself,” he said. A nolle prosequi was entered in respect of the knife charge.

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Sergeant James Muldowney told the court that Ms Doyle’s partner was sick at the time and passed away a few weeks later.
Ms Doyle was unemployed at the time and has two previous convictions for drugs-related offences. One of those was in 2009 for an offence in 2008, when she was 18 and selling ecstasy tablets. The other was in 2021 and was struck out with a sum of €350 paid to the court poor box. She hasn’t come to the attention of Gardaí since.

In mitigation, Mr Gerard Groarke BL told the court that Ms Doyle was under financial pressure at the time of the commission of the offence.

She and her husband had recently purchased “a reasonably new Audi” from the proceeds of a court claim, and its ownership was anonymously reported to social welfare, resulting in a stop to all payments, including Ms Doyle’s carer’s allowance, which she was receiving as the carer for her husband.

Taking to the witness box herself, Ms Doyle told the court that she was “fearing for her life” and couldn’t say who she was moving the drugs for.

She said all of her payments were stopped and she had to ask family for money. She has since done a level 2 course in visual art before progressing to level 3.

“This year, I was accepted into adult education. I'm doing level 5 in beauty therapy and then if I pass, I’ll go to level 6,” she said.

In conclusion, Mr Groarke told the court his client is “very close to being a person who has rehabilitated”.

After adjourning the case for two days for the consideration of sentence, Judge Connolly proceeded to sentence Ms Doyle to four years in prison. However, he suspended the sentence for a total of seven years on the condition that she reenter the workforce as soon as she can, abstain from all drugs and alcohol and have no controlled drugs on premises.