The High Court has ruled that a District Court order dismissing a burglary prosecution against Dean Paget for want of prosecution must be quashed.
Paget was accused by the DPP of committing a burglary on February 5, 2015. The case first came before Dublin District Court in March and later proceeded in Blanchardstown, where the DPP consented to summary disposal.
The District Court accepted that the alleged facts were minor enough for summary trial and ordered pre-trial disclosure. The prosecution failed to provide that material by the first deadline and remained in default after a further peremptory adjournment.
On July 21, 2015, the District Judge dismissed the case for want of prosecution. Neither side had made substantive submissions immediately before that decision.
The written District Court order subsequently recorded that Paget had been informed of his right to jury trial and had not objected to summary disposal. Both parties later agreed that this had not happened.
That was important because burglary is an indictable offence. The District Court could only acquire jurisdiction to try it summarily after statutory conditions were satisfied, including informing Paget of his jury-trial right and obtaining his election. The High Court held those conditions had not been met.
Mr Justice Hunt also considered whether the District Judge had instead been exercising a valid pre-trial power to enforce the disclosure order. He held that District Judges can, in appropriate cases, dismiss proceedings for non-compliance with pre-trial orders.
However, a final dismissal requires a balancing of the accused’s fair-trial rights against the public interest in prosecuting alleged crime. There was no evidence that such a balancing exercise occurred here. The previous peremptory adjournment appeared to have been treated as sufficient by itself.
The High Court therefore held that, whichever jurisdiction the District Court had intended to exercise, the dismissal could not stand. It also rejected Paget’s argument that the DPP’s judicial review application should fail because of delay.