Ten-month sentence for trying to get phones into prison

A man caught attempting to throw a football with mobile phones hidden inside into a prison has been jailed.

Gardaí on patrol were driving past Dublin's Cloverhill prison when they spotted Niall Cully (27) standing inside the railings surrounding the prison. They stopped Cully and found he was holding an orange plastic football with a hole cut into it and four mobile phones inside.

Cully admitted he was trying to throw the ball into the prison. He said he had come under pressure to get the phones into the prison and said his brother was inside awaiting trial for murder.

Cully of Kippure Park, Finglas, Dublin, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to trying to bring mobile phones into a prison at Cloverhill Road on June 2nd, 2014.

Garda Kevin O’Connell agreed with Vincent Heneghan, defending, that Cully was standing under a bright light and was having difficulty getting the ball across the prison walls.

He also agreed that prisoners had no access to the area in which Cully was trying to throw the ball. Judge Martin Nolan told counsel that foolishness was not a mitigating factor.

‘A warning’

Mr Heneghan said his client had been threatened and came under pressure to get the phones in. He said Cully did it in a stupid way under the glare of prison lights.

Judge Nolan noted Cully went about breaking the law in a foolish and ineffective manner. He said it was a fool’s errand as the prisoners would never have received the phones.

He said the prison authorities have a difficult enough job trying to mind prisoners. The judge jailed Cully for 10 months which he said was “a warning” to him that crime was a risky business.

In June 2014 Cully was still serving the suspended portion of a five-year sentence, imposed by Judge Nolan in November 2011, for possession of firearms in suspicious circumstances. In that case Cully was one of three men involved in an incident in which a co-accused shot a man in the neck.

Judge Nolan said that the court had given Cully a chance then and it did not work. He has no other convictions.