The Court of Appeal has allowed an appeal about prison detention to proceed even though it found the individual appeal moot, citing the issue’s public importance and relevance to other cases.
In an ex tempore judgment delivered on 14 March 2016, Ms Justice Finlay Geoghegan said Mariana Kovacs had been definitively released from custody and was no longer at risk under the second warrant. A possible civil claim concerning an earlier period of custody did not create a live issue between the parties, she said.
The appeal concerns part of a High Court decision by Ms Justice Baker in an Article 40 application. Kovacs had first received a three-month suspended sentence. After a later conviction on a guilty plea, she received a one-month sentence, which activated the earlier suspended sentence.
The High Court held the first warrant void because Kovacs had not been notified of her right to elect for jury trial before the conviction and sentence. It nevertheless found she could be lawfully detained under the second warrant, which was expressed to begin “on the legal expiration” of the first sentence, and refused her application for release.
After that decision, Kovacs, who had been on bail, returned to custody at the Dóchas Centre and was definitively released about an hour later. Separately, the Director of Public Prosecutions had begun judicial review proceedings seeking to quash the conviction and sentence underlying the first warrant. The appeal court said her freedom was not at risk because of the issue in this appeal.
The court accepted that the appeal was moot but considered whether it should exceptionally hear it. Justice Finlay Geoghegan said the question of whether a person could be lawfully held under a second, consecutive-sentence warrant when the first warrant’s conviction and sentence had been held void was of exceptional public importance. She also said the issue had systemic relevance to Article 40 liberty applications and could affect criminal cases involving consecutive sentences, including cases where a second conviction activates a suspended sentence.
The judgment records the court’s decision that the appeal could continue so the issue could be heard and determined. Justices Hogan and Mahon agreed. The judgment did not decide the substantive challenge to the second warrant.