The Court of Appeal has refused an application by Vincent O’Donoghue to extend the time for an appeal against his conviction, which followed a guilty plea in 2014.
The ex tempore judgment, delivered on 11 October 2019 by President Birmingham, said O’Donoghue had pleaded guilty on 27 February 2014 to offences described as being in the nature of fraudulent conversion. He was represented by a solicitor and senior and junior counsel. After a sentence hearing, on 29 July 2014, he was ordered to perform 220 hours of community service as an alternative to imprisonment.
O’Donoghue argued that his mental and physical health in 2014 undermined the voluntariness of his plea. He said he formed an intention to appeal within the appeal period but poor health prevented him from pursuing it. The court noted there was no suggestion that he had been unfit to plead; the claim was that his mental state meant the plea was not free and voluntary.
Two medical reports were before the court. A doctor from the practice O’Donoghue had attended said, on reflection, he may have been anxious, depressed and suffering a severe acute stress reaction at the time. A consultant psychiatrist concluded, on the information available and on the balance of probabilities, that O’Donoghue was not fit to submit an appeal at the expected time. The psychiatrist’s report linked his symptoms to the period he had been imprisoned in Western Australia while contesting extradition and to his return to Ireland.
O’Donoghue had contacted solicitors in 2017 about an extension application. After the firm came off the record, he served a notice of discontinuance in March 2018, but later changed his mind and sought to appeal. The offences, or alleged offences, had occurred in 1998 and 1999. The judgment said he had emigrated to Australia in 2002, was imprisoned there from April 2009 to April 2013, and later returned to Ireland under an extradition request.
Applying the Supreme Court’s guidance in DPP v Kelly, the Court of Appeal said such applications require a flexible assessment of what is just and equitable on the particular facts. It said the affidavits and other material had not shown a point of real substance to investigate. Given the guilty plea and the time since the events, the court concluded that the interests of justice would not be served by allowing an appeal intended to set the plea aside. It refused the application to extend time. The court did not determine the proposed appeal against conviction.