The High Court has declined to release a man from custody after an Article 40 inquiry into his bail hearing and the warrants supporting his detention, finding that he was being detained in accordance with law.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys delivered judgment on 27 November 2015. The applicant had been arrested on 6 November in connection with offences against property. The prosecution opposed bail at a District Court hearing in Monaghan the following day, solely on the ground that refusing bail was necessary to ensure he would attend trial. The judgment noted that he lived in Northern Ireland, but did not set out the other evidence relied on at the bail hearing.
The District Court judge refused bail after referring to the presumption of innocence and matters relevant to the bail test. In the High Court, Mr Justice Humphreys said the judge’s intervention during submissions and the wording of the ruling left the applicant’s lawyers with a reasonable concern that the correct legal test might not have been clearly stated. He did not find that this concern justified release under Article 40. He said the appropriate remedy was an application for bail to the High Court, or potentially judicial review.
The applicant sought an Article 40 inquiry on 9 November. The High Court hearing took place over several dates between 9 and 23 November. In considering the documents supporting the detention, the judge examined three committal warrants issued after successive remands.
He found errors on the face of the first two warrants, including that the first cited an Act that did not apply. But those warrants had been replaced and their errors did not invalidate the applicant’s current detention. The third, current warrant also cited the wrong Act in its heading. The judge treated that error, and the issue of the warrant being addressed directly to the prison governor under a District Court rule, as insufficient to invalidate detention in this application. He raised serious doubts about whether that rule was valid but expressly did not decide the question, because it was not necessary to resolve the application.
The court concluded that the applicant was being detained in accordance with law for the purposes of Article 40.4.2° of the Constitution and declined to order his release. The judgment did not determine the underlying criminal charges.