The High Court ordered Gary Miller’s release from the Midlands Prison after finding that the documents available to the prison governor during the Article 40 inquiry did not adequately identify the basis for his detention.
Miller applied on 25 March 2014 for release under Article 40.4.2 of the Constitution. A conditional order was granted that day, and the court heard the application that afternoon. The inquiry concerned whether his detention at that time was lawful.
Miller had been convicted of five driving offences. The District Court imposed two five-month prison terms relevant to the application, to run concurrently. The Circuit Court affirmed the convictions and sentences on appeal on 18 March 2014.
The governor relied on a short form warrant issued that day. It specified a total of ten months’ imprisonment and included record numbers for two cases, but did not state the offences. The court held that the warrant, considered on its own, was not a sufficient legal basis for detention because it did not provide the governor with enough information about the reason for custody.
During the hearing, the respondent produced certified District Court orders identifying the charges and fax copies of a longer warrant setting out the convictions and appeal result. The judge concluded that the short form warrant could be joined with the certified orders: their matching record numbers made the connection clear without relying on outside evidence. Taken together, those documents would have provided a sufficient basis for detention. The judge also found that the long form warrant complied with the statutory requirements for enforcing the sentence.
But the documents had not reached the governor during the hearing. The judgment’s postscript records that the long form warrant was hand-delivered to him at 3.40pm on 26 March, the day after the hearing had concluded. The judge said the inquiry had to be decided on the evidence available during the hearing, and that the governor then had only the short form warrant.
Because the governor lacked adequate information at that point to know with sufficient precision the offence for which Miller was detained, the court was not satisfied that he was being detained in accordance with law. It directed his release under Article 40.4.2. The ruling concerned the lawfulness of the detention on the evidence available during the inquiry; it did not overturn the underlying convictions or sentences.