The Court of Criminal Appeal has refused Robert Doyle’s application for a certificate that would allow him to seek an appeal to the Supreme Court over a proposed jury warning about lies.
The application concerned a “Lucas” type warning: a direction that jurors should consider whether an accused person may have lied for a reason other than guilt. The court said such a warning exists in Irish law and may be required in appropriate cases, but rejected the proposed appeal because the issue did not raise a point of exceptional public importance that should be resolved by the Supreme Court at this time.
Doyle was convicted by a jury in June 2003 of raping and sexually assaulting a woman in May 1998. He received concurrent prison sentences of 10 years for rape and five years for sexual assault. The current application arose from a separate Court of Criminal Appeal decision in May 2006, which refused permission to add two grounds to his application for leave to appeal: one concerning the warning and another alleging a new fact.
The court stressed that the May decision refused permission to add those grounds; it did not determine an appeal on the substance of either ground. Doyle then sought a certificate under section 29 of the Courts of Justice Act 1924, which requires a point of law of exceptional public importance and that an appeal be desirable in the public interest.
Doyle argued that the proposed question concerned the circumstances in which a trial judge should warn jurors about lies on issues linked to the alleged offences. The prosecution opposed certification, submitting that the May decision concerned whether Doyle could add a late ground, not a substantive ruling on the warning’s application.
In its judgment delivered on 19 December 2006, the court said earlier Irish decisions established that a warning may be necessary in an appropriate case, while leaving its application to the trial judge’s discretion as the law develops. It said there was no general obligation to give the warning in every case involving lies. The court also noted that Doyle had not established that his trial lawyers’ failure to raise the issue was inadvertent, or that the absence of a formal warning had caused injustice in his case.
The court refused the certificate. It did not grant an appeal to the Supreme Court or revisit Doyle’s convictions or sentences in this application.