The High Court ordered the immediate release of a woman detained at the Dóchas Centre after the respondent conceded that an unreasonable delay in executing her committal warrants meant her detention was unlawful.
The Article 40.4.2 inquiry concerned ten Circuit Court warrants issued on 28 November 2013. They were executed on 5 February 2015, when the woman was already in custody following a separate conviction. The warrants related to District Court convictions whose sentences totalled 22 months’ imprisonment.
In a judgment delivered on 1 April, Mr Justice McDermott rejected the woman’s argument that the warrants had expired. He found that the six-month execution limit in the District Court Rules did not apply to warrants issued by the Circuit Court after an appeal. He also rejected the argument that a one-year limit in the Circuit Court Rules applied, finding that rule concerned civil execution proceedings.
One warrant purported to impose a three-month prison sentence for a public order offence. The judgment said that warrant could not stand because the maximum penalty for the offence was a €500 fine. The court’s later release order was based on the remaining detention issue.
The woman’s supplemental affidavit described occasions when she had been available to authorities between the issue and execution of the warrants. She said she had lived at a women’s refuge in Wexford for several months in 2014, attended probation appointments, visited Garda stations and collected social welfare payments. She also said Gardaí knew her whereabouts and that she was not trying to evade them.
At the resumed hearing on 15 April, the respondent accepted that the woman had neither caused nor contributed to the delay, that the executive had a duty to execute the warrants within a reasonable time, and that this had not happened. The respondent filed no further affidavit. The court held that the detention under those warrants was therefore not in accordance with law and directed her immediate release. It also awarded her the costs of the proceedings.