The Supreme Court has dismissed Anthony Buck’s appeal against the decision to strike out his second application alleging a miscarriage of justice in his murder conviction. The court said the application had no reasonable prospect of succeeding because the matters raised did not amount to new or newly discovered facts within the meaning of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993.
Buck was convicted by a Central Criminal Court jury in 1998 of murdering David Nugent and of robbery. His conviction appeal was dismissed, and the Supreme Court rejected a further appeal in 2002 concerning his arrest, access to a solicitor and the admissibility of statements made during detention.
Buck made his first application under section 2 of the 1993 Act in 2014, arguing that later legal developments on access to legal advice amounted to newly discovered facts. The Court of Appeal dismissed it in 2015. In 2016, he brought a second application, raising 13 grounds concerning matters including his trial evidence, witness accounts, custody records and alleged gaps in the Garda investigation. The Court of Appeal struck it out in 2018. Buck appealed that decision to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court explained that a second section 2 application is subject to a time limit: it can rely on facts discovered, or whose significance was not appreciated, after the first application. It cannot be used to raise matters already known or understood during earlier proceedings. The court also said that an application may be struck out, but only sparingly and in clear cases, with disputed affidavit evidence treated in the applicant’s favour for that purpose.
Applying those principles, the court found that Buck’s grounds either concerned issues raised or available in earlier proceedings, opinions about evidence, or matters he said he had appreciated years earlier. It rejected his claim that a solicitor’s representation of multiple people in related prosecutions established a conflict of interest. The court also said the alleged significance of several witness and custody-record issues had been canvassed at trial or in earlier proceedings.
The ruling concerned whether the second application could proceed under the statutory test. The Supreme Court did not order a retrial or quash Buck’s conviction. It concluded that the application had no reasonable prospect of succeeding and struck it out.