The High Court ordered the immediate release of Damien O’Neill from Wheatfield Prison after finding that the warrant used to commit him for contempt was invalid.
In a judgment delivered on 12 March 2015, President of the High Court Kearns ruled on an inquiry under Article 40 of the Constitution into O’Neill’s detention. The inquiry concerned the execution and wording of the committal warrant; the court said it was not reviewing the correctness of the earlier contempt decision.
O’Neill had been sentenced to 56 days in prison on 19 February 2015 after Gilligan J. found that he breached a High Court order on 8 and 9 December 2014. The order restricted people with knowledge of it from coming within 20 metres of water meter installation workstations and obstructing access to GMC/Sierra work vehicles. The judgment said the hearing had been conducted fairly and no appeal had been brought against the conviction or sentence.
O’Neill’s lawyers argued that the warrant did not follow the prescribed form under Order 44, rule 2 of the Rules of the Superior Courts. That form requires a contemnor to remain in prison until the contempt is purged and the court orders discharge. Instead, the warrant specified detention for 56 days without mentioning that route to early release. The State accepted that the committal order was partly punitive and partly coercive, and that its form did not comply with the rule, but argued that the defects did not invalidate detention.
Kearns found that the warrant had been altered into a form suited to a purely punitive order, omitting the option of purging contempt. The court considered this significant because the underlying order was partly coercive. It also found that the warrant omitted the dates of the contempt and conviction, details of the conduct found to be contempt, and the court and judge who imposed the sentence. The respondent relied on the warrant alone to justify detention and did not seek to join the sentencing order to it as supporting evidence.
The court rejected a separate challenge concerning whether Gardaí had returned the executed warrant to court, describing release on that basis as illogical in the circumstances. It nevertheless held that the warrant’s defects made it invalid and directed O’Neill’s immediate release. The judgment expressed concern that procedural defects could override substantive justice, while noting that Article 40 relief could not be refused where the record showed no legal foundation for detention.