The Supreme Court has allowed an appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions and set aside a High Court order that had stopped the prosecution of an anonymised priest facing three indecent assault charges. It dismissed his application to prohibit the proceedings.
The charges relate to alleged offences against the same complainant between 31 July 1981 and 3 August 1982, when she was about 15 to 16. The applicant, born in 1937, denied the allegations in statements to gardaí. The judgment records that six later charges were added and subsequently dropped.
The appeal concerned a second set of judicial review proceedings over disclosure and efforts to trace people who had written medical notes. The High Court had found that the prosecution’s delays in meeting disclosure obligations were inordinate and inexcusable, and restrained further prosecution. The DPP appealed.
Delivering the Supreme Court judgment on 28 March 2007, Mr Justice Fennelly said the court had to consider whether there was blameworthy prosecutorial delay and, if so, balance its effects against the public interest in prosecuting serious charges. Delay alone did not automatically justify stopping a trial.
The court found no culpable delay by the prosecution. It said the applicant’s first judicial review proceedings had postponed the trial until March 1999. The DPP later fulfilled an undertaking to obtain Dr Bereen’s records, and a separate application for records held by the North Eastern Health Board was made by the defence and complied with in September 2000.
After an October 2000 trial was halted and the jury discharged for reasons the judgment said were unrelated to the application, the defence sought assistance tracing authors of medical notes. The Supreme Court concluded that the prosecution’s efforts to help did not amount to accepting a legal duty to find and provide witnesses. It also found no evidence that the DPP had possessed and failed to disclose a later-discovered file containing a note of alleged sexual abuse by the complainant’s uncle.
The applicant had claimed excessive pre-trial anxiety, but he filed no affidavit supporting that claim. The court said some evidence of distress beyond the ordinary stress of facing criminal proceedings was needed. It held that the claim was unsupported and, even if blameworthy delay had been established, would not justify prohibiting the trial.
The judgment therefore reversed the High Court’s order and dismissed the application. It did not determine the criminal charges.