The Court of Appeal has refused Stephen Egan’s application to rely on findings from an inquiry into the death of fellow prisoner Gary Douch as new evidence in a bid to reopen his appeal against a life sentence for manslaughter.
The judgment, delivered on 21 March 2017 by Mr Justice Edwards, concerned a review application under section 2 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993. The court considered first whether the inquiry material met the legal test for new or newly discovered facts. It did not decide whether that material could otherwise be admitted as evidence or whether the sentence was excessive.
Egan was sentenced to life imprisonment in June 2006 after a jury found him not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. The sentencing judge considered that his mental disorder significantly reduced, but did not eliminate, his responsibility. The Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed his sentence appeal in 2010.
Egan relied on findings in a Commission of Investigation report published in 2014. Among other matters, the report criticised his discharge from the Central Mental Hospital to prison, his transfer from Cloverhill to Mountjoy, and aspects of his care and medical assessment. Egan’s case was that these findings were new facts relevant to his culpability and sentence. The prosecution argued that the report’s findings were opinions rather than legally admissible facts, and that the underlying issues had already been raised or could have been investigated at the time.
The Court of Appeal assumed, for the purpose of deciding the preliminary issue, that the prosecution’s arguments about the report’s legal effect and whether its conclusions were opinions could be overcome. It held that the report’s publication after the trial and appeal was not enough to make its underlying facts new or newly discovered. The evidence underpinning the findings, the court said, was available or could have been obtained with reasonable diligence at the time of trial and sentencing. Some central issues had also been put before the sentencing judge, though not explored in the same depth.
The court therefore refused permission to rely on the inquiry findings, concluding that Egan had not met the required test. It declined to rule definitively on whether the report had legal effect or constituted opinion rather than fact, because those questions would not change the outcome. With no basis to reopen the sentence appeal, the court refused the section 2 application. The life sentence remained undisturbed by this application.