The High Court has refused a judicial review challenge to a District Court decision to try Reginald Carroll summarily on charges of dangerous driving and endangerment. It also refused his requests for discovery and recordings of earlier High Court hearings in the judicial review case.
Mr Justice Cian Ferriter ruled that neither offence gave Mr Carroll a right to elect trial by jury. The dangerous-driving charge under section 53 of the Road Traffic Act 1961 was a summary offence in this case, where no death or serious bodily harm was alleged. The endangerment charge under section 13 of the Non-Fatal Offences against the Person Act 1997 is a hybrid offence, but the legislation does not give an accused a right to choose a jury trial when the Director of Public Prosecutions elects to proceed summarily.
The case arose from alleged dangerous driving and an alleged collision involving Mr Carroll’s car and a Garda patrol car near Kilkieran, County Galway, on 23 April 2013. The criminal proceedings have been stayed since the High Court granted leave for judicial review in January 2015.
The judge said the judicial review was limited to whether District Judge Mary Fahy acted unlawfully on 13 November 2014 by setting the charges down for hearing without allowing Mr Carroll to elect trial by jury. A prior application to add broader claims seeking prohibition or dismissal of the prosecution had been refused by the High Court in 2017. That decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal in 2019, and the Supreme Court refused leave to appeal in 2020.
Mr Carroll’s wider allegations included claims of fabricated evidence, malicious prosecution and wrongdoing by Gardaí and others. Justice Ferriter said those matters fell outside the issue for which leave to bring the judicial review had been granted. He therefore ruled that the discovery and audio-recording requests, which Mr Carroll said would support those broader claims, were misconceived and unnecessary to decide the jury-trial issue.
The court refused the discovery application, the request for hearing recordings and the substantive judicial review. The judge said the summary criminal proceedings would now proceed in the District Court. Mr Carroll remains entitled to defend the charges, challenge the reliability and weight of the prosecution evidence and make submissions open to him at trial. The High Court did not determine the criminal charges or the wider allegations.