A WOMAN who was apprehended at Dublin airport with €140,000 worth of cocaine concealed in her suitcase has succeeded in having the majority of her five-year sentence suspended on appeal.
The Court of Criminal Appeal found “something went awry” in the imposition of a five-year sentence on Rochell Pieters (28) by Judge Katherine Delahunt at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in January last year.
Pieters, of Salt River, Colleridge Road, Cape Town, and originally from South Africa, pleaded guilty to possession of 2kg of cocaine valued at €140,000 for supply at Dublin airport on November 18th, 2008. She was intercepted by customs officers after travelling from Brazil.
Presiding judge Mr Justice Donal O’Donnell, sitting with Mr Justice Eamon de Valera and Mr Justice Michael Hanna, said the case was unusual as the appeal court was not asked to determine whether the trial judge had erred in principle, but whether there had been incorrect evidence before the court which fostered an error in principle.
He said it was clear Judge Delahunt had attached significant weight to evidence that the cocaine had been hidden loosely in clothing packed in Pieters’s suitcase, rather than in the lining of the suitcase itself.
Mr Justice O’Donnell said the sentencing judge had been provided with inaccurate information by a witness, as the drugs were in fact hidden in the suitcase lining, and the error in the sentencing process was “clearly not” attributable to her.
He said the court found this error may have had a significant bearing on the outcome of the case and it was therefore possible for the appeal court to reconsider the sentence imposed.
Mr Justice O’Donnell said the court would suspend the balance of Pieters’s five-year sentence with effect from the June 1st, having regard to the fact she had pleaded guilty and was a “vulnerable” person who had been abused in many different ways in her life.
Conor Devally, for the applicant, had told the court that, although the judge committed no error in principle, the weighting she attached to the guilt of his client was assessed on the basis of inaccurate evidence.
Mr Devally said the inference that Pieters “must have seen” the cocaine packages hidden under her clothing could have coloured Judge Delahunt’s assessment of the case.
He told the court Pieters had endured a traumatic childhood, had no previous convictions and had an eight-year-old girl at home who lived with her former partner.
Mr Devally said she was seen as a “plaything” for the men who gave her the drugs and that she had been diagnosed with HIV while in custody in Ireland.