The High Court has concluded that Richard McCann’s District Court trial for criminal damage was tainted by objective bias and rendered unfair by the prosecution’s inadvertent failure to disclose what it knew about his custody on the night of the alleged offence.
Mr McCann brought judicial review proceedings challenging his convictions and sentences under section 2 of the Criminal Damage Act 1991. The convictions followed a trial at Blanchardstown District Court on 25 July 2012. He alleged that the trial judge interrupted his counsel, gave inadequate reasons and showed bias. He did not appeal to the Circuit Court; the High Court stressed that judicial review was not an appeal on the merits.
The prosecution case was that, in the early hours of 15 February 2011, Mr McCann damaged vehicles and the home of a man identified in the judgment as C.M., in Finglas. A witness identified him as the person who emerged from a vehicle described as a white taxi. Mr McCann denied causing the damage and said he had been in custody at Finglas Garda Station from about 1am.
The High Court rejected his complaint that the District Court judge had failed to give adequate reasons. It also found that interruptions during the witness’s cross-examination, considered on their own, did not prevent counsel from putting the defence case. But it concluded that the judge’s interventions on several matters, taken together, would lead a reasonably informed observer to believe that the judge had made up his mind before hearing all the evidence. These included remarks about whether the witness was being accused of lying and the judge’s insistence that the defence had not proved the vehicle was a taxi, despite evidence describing it as one.
The court also allowed Mr McCann to amend his grounds to raise the prosecution’s handling of his custody evidence. During cross-examination, he said he had been at Finglas Garda Station from 1am to 1.15am and that custody records would support his account. Garda Quill later stated in an affidavit that Mr McCann had been arrested at 1.20am that night and that the garda had learned of his detention after attending the scene.
The High Court found that the District Court had been left with the impression that Garda Quill could contradict Mr McCann’s account, when the garda’s information supported it. The judge said that this was significant to the disputed timing of the incident and that the District Court had not been able to assess the timing evidence with that information.
The judgment concludes that the trial was unfair for both reasons: objective bias and the prosecution authorities’ inadvertent failure to disclose their knowledge of the circumstances that night. The supplied source ends at the court’s conclusion and does not state the specific order made or the precise relief granted.