The Court of Criminal Appeal quashed A.C.’s sexual assault convictions after finding that material relevant to the complainant’s credibility was disclosed to the defence only minutes before trial. The court did not order a retrial, concluding that a properly directed jury could not safely convict in light of the material.
A.C. had appealed convictions entered by the Circuit Criminal Court on 24 July 2003. The jury found him guilty by majority verdict on five sexual assault counts and not guilty on five counts of buggery. The charges concerned alleged incidents involving L.M. in County Wicklow between May and July 1992. Those were allegations put to the jury, not findings made by the appeal court.
The appeal raised two issues: whether the prosecution had failed to disclose material promptly, and whether the jury’s verdicts were perverse. The court decided the disclosure issue and said it was therefore unnecessary to consider the second issue.
The defence had requested a Garda investigation file in February 2003 concerning separate allegations made by V.M., a cousin of the complainant. The Director of Public Prosecutions had decided not to prosecute those allegations, which related to 1996 and 1997. A Garda letter dated 7 April said material was attached, but the attachments were missing. The requested documents reached the defence only minutes before the trial began on 23 July.
The appeal court said there had been no reasonable opportunity to consider the material. It included the dates of V.M.’s allegations, which the court considered relevant because L.M. had said the appellant referred to V. when initiating the first alleged assault in 1992. No questions about that information were put to the complainant at trial.
The court found the information highly material in a case that turned on the credibility of the complainant and A.C. It said responsibility for the material not being available for effective use rested significantly with the prosecution, while also noting that the defence had failed to notice that the April letter’s enclosures were absent. The court found no basis to infer that the defence’s failure to use the material was tactical.
It ruled that the trial was unsafe and unsatisfactory and quashed the convictions. On retrial, the court said a judge would be obliged to direct a jury that it could not safely convict, given the material and the complainant’s evidence about the timing and initiation of the alleged events. It therefore declined to order a retrial.