The court of criminal appeal has refused to reduce a twenty-year sentence imposed on the Dublin criminal Tony Felloni for heroin dealing. The decision has been welcomed by the Independent TD, Tony Gregory, who said Felloni was like a deadly plague who had destroyed whole communities and his own family with heroin.
Mr. Justice Hugh O'Flaherty quoted a psychiatrist’s report, which said Felloni was unlikely to make changes to lead a law-abiding lifestyle. The fifty-six-year-old father of seven was jailed for twenty years for selling heroin four times, three of which were committed on bail.
The fact that three of the offences were committed while Felloni was out on bail, was taken into account by the sentencing judge Cyril Kelly when he imposed on him the longest sentence for drug dealing in the history of the state. But, in court today Felloni's defence team argued the judge hadn't taken account of the fact that the heroin dealer was fifty-three-years-old and the jail term therefore amounted to a life sentence.
They also argued that the court didn't take Felloni's own addiction or his guilty pleas into consideration and that it didn't allow for the possibility of rehabilitation. The three appeal judges however took less than twenty minutes to reject these arguments and uphold the twenty-year sentence, a decision which has delighted the Gardaí, the community in Dublin's north inner city and anti-drugs activists alike.
The court did allow Felloni one concession. It backdated the sentence by two months from March to January of 1996 to the date Felloni first went into custody. Mr. Justice Hugh O’Flaherty said this was a case of unmitigated gloom.
He pointed to probation and psychiatric reports which said Felloni was HIV positive, he was unlikely to lead a law-abiding lifestyle and he was institutionalised that he would not manage longer than two days out of prison. Felloni is not due for release until the year 2011 at the earliest.
