Gardaí yesterday welcomed the handing down of a 15-year sentence to a 38-year-old drug dealer whom they had been targeting for 10 years, writes Barry Roche, Southern Correspondent.
Michael Tanner, from Casement Street, Clonakilty, west Cork, was sentenced after being convicted by a jury of possessing €77,000 worth of cocaine and cannabis resin for sale or supply.
Insp John Healy said the 15-year sentence imposed on Tanner sent out "a very clear signal that if people want to engage in criminal activity at this level, there will be a price to be paid at some stage down the road".
Judge Seán Ó Donnabhain said he was satisfied that Tanner was the organiser and not just a courier in the drug deal.
The judge said Tanner had been found guilty on "substantial and solid evidence" by a jury at the end of a week-long trial after he had put forward a defence that he had been set up by gardaí when they caught him with the drugs on June 2nd last.
"That attitude probably gives as good an indication as one can get of your lack of contrition but the only hoodwinking that went on was your attempt to hoodwink the jury and it didn't succeed," he said. Judge Ó Donnabhain said he had sought to find some mitigating factors in Tanner's favour but he could not. Tanner had not pleaded guilty and he had not materially assisted gardaí in any way in their investigation.
Tanner didn't claim he was a drug addict involved to feed a habit and the evidence showed that he was the organiser behind a professional drugs operation, which Judge Ó Donnabhain believed was confirmed by the mix of cocaine and cannabis in the seizure.
He noted evidence from Insp Healy at yesterday's sentencing hearing that Tanner had become unemployed 10 years ago and had not worked, claimed social welfare, paid any tax or had any visible source of income in that time.
He said the best he could possibly do for Tanner in the circumstances, taking the total lack of mitigating factors into account, was 15 years in jail. He ordered that the sentence be backdated to June 2nd, 2004 when Tanner was first taken into custody.
The court heard during Tanner's trial how gardaí received information in February 2004 that €100,000 in cash was discovered at the workplace of a man, Mr A, believed to be an associate of Tanner, after which gardaí put a surveillance operation in place.
On June 2nd, 2004, gardaí mounted a surveillance operation at a house rented by Mr A at Bawnleigh, Ballinhassig in west Cork and at around 4.40 p.m., they spotted Tanner and another man, Mr B, arriving on two motorcycles.
Tanner was seen holding a blue holdall bag as he went into the house and when gardaí burst in on the suspects, Tanner was seen with a white package in his hand. The package was found to contain a kilo of cocaine and the blue holdall to contain a kilo of cannabis resin.
Tanner denied during the trial that he had been caught with anything in his hand and had claimed throughout that he was being set up by gardaí. The operation involved drug squad detectives from both Cork City and Cork West Garda Divisions.