TROUBLING QUESTIONS ABOUT TRIAL OF HOLLAND

Opinion: Vincent Browne

The conviction of Patrick Holland last week on a charge of possessing
cannabis for the purposes of sale or supply and his imprisonment for 20
years are troubling. The Garda tactics in its handling of the case were
suspect, the evidential basis for the conviction was hardly clearcut and
the sentence appeared disproportionate in the circumstances. The case also
raises questions about drugs policy.

Before going further I want to acknowledge that the three judges who heard
the case in the Special Criminal Court, Mr Justice Richard Johnson, Judge
Patrick Smith and Judge Michael Reilly, are respected members of the High
Court, Circuit Court and District Court benches respectively. They are
judges of integrity and professionalism.

I offer this acknowledgement not in any perfunctory sense but because I
know one of them personally (Mr Justice Johnson) and the other two by
repute and I know each of them to be distinguished and scrupulously fair.
My contention here is simply and respectfully that they got it wrong.

I also want to acknowledge at the outset that Patrick Holland is an
unlikely candidate for victimhood. He has three previous criminal
convictions. He was convicted in 1965 of receiving stolen goods, in 1981 of
involvement in armed bank robberies and in 1989 of possession of commercial
explosives and detonators.

THE first curious element in the Patrick Holland case concerns the arrest
of his solicitor, James Orange, on the very morning that Holland was
arrested while disembarking from the ferry at Dun Laoghaire, on April 9th
last.

The solicitor was released just at the time that Holland was charged. The
effect of the arrest and detention of James Orange was to deprive Holland
of the advice of his own solicitor while in Garda custody. The Supreme
Court has held in The People (DPP) v Healy (1990) that there is a
constitutional right to access to a solicitor.

James Orange was arrested in connection with an investigation by the
Criminal Assets Bureau into the origins of the monies which financed the
purchase of Patrick Holland's house in Brittas Bay, Co Wicklow. It strains
credibility that the arrest and the length of detention of a solicitor whom
gardai knew was the legal adviser of Patrick Holland happened by chance to
coincide exactly with the arrest and period of detention of Holland.

Holland was convicted on the evidence of an alleged accomplice, Charles
Bowden, and on alleged admissions while in Garda custody. There was some
minor, allegedly corroborating, evidence linking blank driving licences
found in Holland's home and in the warehouse where a large consignment of
cannabis was found.

The evidence of Charles Bowden must be viewed as highly suspect. He
apparently has done a deal with gardai whereby he will avoid charges,
probably in relation to the murder of Veronica Guerin, in return for giving
incriminating evidence against a number of suspected major criminals, some
of whom are suspected of involvement in that murder.

His incentive to give as damaging evidence as possible against others is
considerable, and for that reason, his evidence must be treated with
suspicion. It would seem therefore that the evidence of this alleged
accomplice must require significantly more substantive corroboration than
would apply normally to the evidence of accomplices. And yet the
corroboration that applied in the Holland case was itself suspect. This was
the Garda evidence of "admissions".

Patrick Holland is, on his past record, a hardened criminal. He is also,
clearly, a clever manipulator, as he proved in his orchestrated media
interviews of earlier this year. He believed, with a good deal of
justification, that he would be charged with the murder of Veronica Guerin
and, for this reason, fled the jurisdiction.

He agreed to return, allegedly on the advice of his solicitor, to face
interrogation on the murder charge. Clearly he believed he was vulnerable
to being "fitted up" by the Garda and for this reason obviously, he
purchased sophisticated recording devices, intended to record his
interviews with gardai.

How credible is it therefore that in the course of his 48hour detention he
made several admissions to gardai of involvement in the purchase and sale
of illegal drugs? The gardai could have arranged for the interviews with
Holland to be taperecorded or videotaped, but chose not to do so. They
said this was because there were no recording devices available at Lucan
Garda station, where he was being held, and it was inconvenient to move him
to a station where such facilities were in place. I am not alleging that
any of the gardai who gave evidence in the case of such "admissions" were
not telling the truth. I am merely suggesting that it was not beyond the
bounds of reasonable doubt that Holland did not make such concessions and
admissions.

And yet this is the sole corroborative evidence (apart from the minor
corroboration about blank driving licences, to which the Special Criminal
Court itself attached little significance) which the court relied on to
uphold the evidence of the "supergrass" accomplice, Bowden.

And then there is the issue of the 20year sentence. As Jim Cusack, this
newspaper's Security Correspondent, reported on November 20th last, a few
weeks before the sentencing of Holland another Dublin criminal, Russell
Warren, was sentenced to just five years' imprisonment for possessing £2.7
million worth of cannabis. In July 1995 an English drug smuggler who had
700 kg of cannabis, with an estimated value of £2.7 million, received a
sevenyear sentence.

THE evidence of Charles Bowden against Patrick Holland was that Holland
received 35 kilos of cannabis per week over several months. Holland was not
apprehended in possession of any drug, and yet he got four times the
sentence Warren received and almost three times the sentence given to the
English smuggler.

The court was entitled to take into account Holland's previous convictions,
but at the going rate, according to lawyers experienced in such criminal
cases, the sentence should have been no more than 12 years, taking
everything into consideration.

That anybody should be sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment for the sale and
supply of cannabis is ludicrous. Whatever harm (if any) cannabis causes to
those who use it, it is puny compared with other legal substances, notably
alcohol and tobacco. The contention that cannabis use leads inexorably to
the use of hard drugs, notably heroin, is simply to ignore the hard
evidence available here on heroin use.

The "gateway" to hard drugs here is not "soft" drugs but deprivation, as
even a glimpse of the lovely coloured maps produced by Pat Rabbitte's
Ministerial Task Force on hard drugs two years ago would establish.

And, incidentally, what is the appropriate sentence for a 58yearold man,
with Holland's previous record, who is convicted of dealing in heroin, if
20 years' imprisonment is to be the appropriate sentence for dealing in
cannabis?