The Court of Appeal has dismissed Reginald Carroll’s appeal against the refusal of his application for a jury trial on 14 dangerous-driving charges and one endangerment charge. It also rejected his appeals over discovery and access to recordings of an earlier High Court hearing, and refused a later application to introduce evidence.
The charges arise from alleged motoring incidents on 23 April 2013. The judgment says the 14 dangerous-driving summonses and the endangerment summons were issued in November 2013 and relate to the same case number. The endangerment summons alleges that Carroll rammed a Garda patrol vehicle while a sergeant was inside. These are allegations; the appeal concerned the legal right to a jury trial, not whether the charges were proved.
District Judge Mary Fahy refused Carroll’s jury-trial application on 13 November 2014 and listed the charges for hearing in the District Court. Carroll sought judicial review. The Court of Appeal said the leave granted for that case was confined to challenging the refusal of a jury trial. Earlier attempts to broaden the case to seek orders stopping or dismissing the prosecutions had failed, and the court said those wider issues could not be reopened in this appeal.
The court held that the dangerous-driving charges, as brought, were summary offences and the relevant legislation did not provide for a jury trial. It also held that the endangerment offence can be tried summarily or on indictment, but the accused has no statutory right to choose indictment once the Director of Public Prosecutions elects to proceed summarily. The court rejected Carroll’s reliance on the complexity or severity of the charges and his argument that possible cumulative sentences made the offences non-minor. It said the District Court’s aggregate limit for consecutive prison sentences is two years.
The judges found the requested discovery and hearing recordings were not relevant to the confined legal issue of jury-trial entitlement. They said the recordings and material sought were intended to support wider allegations that were outside the scope of the judicial review. The court did not decide whether Carroll might have a disclosure entitlement to any material for defending the criminal charges.
The appeal was dismissed. The court proposed that the DPP receive the costs of the appeal, subject to any party seeking a different order within 14 days of delivery of the judgment. The judgment does not state that the underlying charges were resolved; it says they remained pending before the District Court.