The High Court ruled that an incorrect date of birth on a retained blood-sample container was a technical error that did not, on the evidence before the District Court, justify dismissing a drink-driving charge.
Mr Justice Hedigan delivered the judgment on 7 July 2009 in an appeal by way of case stated brought by the Director of Public Prosecutions. The prosecutor challenged a District Court decision that dismissed the case after finding the labelling error breached section 18 of the Road Traffic Act 1994 and that the prosecution had not explained it.
The charge alleged that David Hopkins drove in a public place on 6 May 2007 with an alcohol concentration above the statutory limit. Garda Gareth O’Brien told the District Court that Hopkins provided a blood sample after saying medical reasons prevented him from giving a breath specimen. A doctor divided the sample between two containers, sealed them and gave Hopkins the option to retain one. The doctor mistakenly wrote Hopkins’s date of birth, incorrectly recorded as 30 March 1938, where the date the sample was taken should have appeared. The custody record gave his date of birth as 30 March 1948.
The Garda said the two containers bore the same serial number and were sealed and labelled with Hopkins’s name. The container retained by the Garda was sent to the Medical Bureau of Road Safety, which reported 106 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. The High Court noted that the resulting certificate was facially free of defect.
The defence relied on a letter stating that Claymon Laboratories would not examine the retained sample because of the incorrect date of birth. The judgment said the letter was never formally introduced in evidence or proven. It also found that the District Court had not been given evidence about the request for analysis, attempts to verify the sample or efforts to obtain testing elsewhere. The High Court therefore could not rely on the letter as evidence of prejudice.
Justice Hedigan held that, for this technical labelling error, the accused had to show that overlooking it would appreciably hamper his defence or otherwise significantly prejudice him. He distinguished a prior case involving a flaw in the central certificate evidence. Here, the error was on the accused’s retained container, while the Bureau’s certificate was free from defect on its face.
The High Court concluded that the mistake was an evident technical slip and did not require a specific explanation from the prosecution. The District Judge should have considered whether real prejudice resulted before dismissing the charge. Finding no such prejudice in the admissible evidence, the High Court held that the District Judge erred in law. The judgment did not determine guilt or itself enter a conviction.