The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions over whether breath-test statements were admissible when a Garda signed them after the driver. The court held that its earlier decision in DPP v Freeman remained binding in the circumstances of this case.
The appeal arose from a District Court conviction of Robert Hodgins for driving with an alcohol concentration in his breath above the legal limit. On appeal, the trial judge asked whether he could consider prejudice or fair-trial rights when deciding if the statements were admissible, despite Freeman holding that statements signed in that sequence were not duly completed.
Section 13 of the Road Traffic Act 2010 and regulations made under it require the Garda to sign two statements produced by the breath-testing apparatus before asking the person tested to sign them. In this case, the respondent signed first and the Garda signed immediately afterwards. The DPP accepted that this breached the prescribed procedure and that the facts matched Freeman, which concerned materially identical provisions under earlier legislation.
The DPP asked the Supreme Court to revisit and overrule Freeman. It argued that the error did not affect the integrity or probative value of the evidence and that the approach in DPP v Avadenei called for consideration of its effect on fair-trial rights. The respondent argued that Avadenei had not overruled Freeman and that the earlier decision remained binding.
Justice Iseult O’Malley, delivering the court’s judgment, said the question was whether the statements met the statutory conditions for admission as evidence of their contents. She said the case did not concern evidence obtained in breach of constitutional rights, and the fair-trial analysis discussed in Avadenei was not the governing test. The issue fell instead within Avadenei’s category of cases where an error means the evidence does not prove what it was intended to prove.
The court concluded that Freeman had not been shown to be clearly wrong. Although a different interpretation of the signature sequence might be preferred, Freeman’s reasoning—that the statutory conditions for admitting the statements required strict compliance—could not be displaced. The court also noted that the sequence requirement remained in place after the Freeman decisions.
The Supreme Court dismissed the DPP’s appeal. It did not determine the underlying District Court appeal or make a new finding on Hodgins’s guilt; the case stated established that Freeman remained binding on the trial judge in these circumstances.