A pensioner overcame two strokes and a triple hear

A pensioner overcame two strokes and a triple heart bypass operation to start a new career as a bootlegger hoping to run tobacco past the Revenue blockade.

Thomas O’Donnell was stopped at Heathrow Airport in March this year on a return trip from the Far East and with 16,200 cigarettes stuffed in his luggage.

London’s Southwark Crown Court heard the aging adventurer had earlier smuggled 36.

65kg of handrolling tobacco into Britain on earlier trips.

But his appeal against a three month prison sentence for duty evasion between November 1999 and March failed today (Friday).

It was claimed that O’Donnell, of Linden Grove, Peckham, was unduly suffering in Pentonville Prison because of his age and health – causing Recorder Michael Wood, QC, to comment: ‘But he is still fit enough to go to Thailand.

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Dismissing the appeal, the judge, sitting with two magistrates, said: ‘We see nothing wrong with the sentence at all.

‘We think you were extremely fortunate only to receive a three month sentence.

‘This was persistent offending and the offence was committed after you had been warned about your activities – yet you continued to do it.

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He said the court took into account the defendant’s ill health.

‘You say you committed this offence to supplement your meagre income, yet still having the means to go to Thailand when you can,’ said the judge.

‘The sentence was on the lenient side and this is appeal is dismissed.

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Mrs Judith Guy Davies, for O’Donnell, said the grounds for the appeal were her client’s age and ill health.

‘He has had three heart attacks, a triple bypass, and two strokes, and suffers arthritis, he finds prison conditions very hard,’ she added.

The barrister said life for O’Donnell was extremely unpleasant – even getting in and out of his cell bunk taking up to 20 minutes.

She said allowing his return to the old people’s sheltered accommodation, his home for three years, was not swapping one institution for another.

‘He is very happy there.

His friends are there and he is able to come and go.

He is fearful of losing that accommodation.

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Mrs Guy-Davies said the offences were a temporary return to a former lifestyle when O’Donnell lived on the wrong side of the law.

The court heard his last conviction was in May 1988 – when he was jailed for three years at Winchester Crown Court for burglary.

ends