The Court of Appeal has refused Denis Casey’s application asking it to add to or amplify its judgment in his criminal appeal. The court said the proposed addition would require it to revisit the judgment and that Casey could raise the alleged omission directly with the Supreme Court.
The ruling, issued by the President on 4 October 2017, followed a judgment delivered on 30 June 2017. The court had set 27 July for a hearing on Casey’s appeal against the severity of his sentence. Casey notified the court that he would not proceed with that appeal, but filed a motion seeking an addendum on whether criminal liability could be imposed on an accused based on a professional standard applied only in “extremely rare circumstances”.
In an affidavit supporting the motion, Casey’s solicitor, Mr Conlon, said the issue was important and had been omitted from the judgment. He said Casey wanted to raise it before the Supreme Court but feared that court might decline to consider it because the Court of Appeal had not addressed it.
The Director of Public Prosecutions opposed the application. In a replying affidavit, solicitor Mr Matthews argued that it would reopen the appeal and the trial court’s voir dire hearing, and radically alter the defence advanced at trial. He disputed whether Casey had raised the proposed defence at trial and challenged the account of the expert accountant’s evidence. Those were the prosecution’s submissions; the Court of Appeal did not determine the underlying dispute about what had been raised at trial.
The Court of Appeal considered the motion and affidavits without hearing oral argument. It said the request was not based on an alleged factual error undermining the judgment. Instead, it concerned a legal issue that Casey said had arisen but that the judgment did not address. The court held that this was not a proper basis for reconsidering or revisiting its judgment.
The court said Casey could cite the alleged omission as a reason in an application to the Supreme Court. It also said it must remain neutral and could not explain or defend its judgment in any Supreme Court proceedings. The court refused the application; it did not decide whether the professional-standard argument was correct or whether the Supreme Court would admit or hear an appeal.