The Supreme Court has refused to order a retrial of T.N. over charges concerning the operation of a landfill site at Kerdiffstown, County Kildare, reversing the Court of Appeal’s decision to send the case back for trial.
T.N. was acquitted in 2015, when the trial judge directed the acquittal on eight counts under the Waste Management Act 1996. The Director of Public Prosecutions appealed. The Court of Appeal held that the trial judge had made an error in interpreting the Act’s meaning of “manager” and ordered a retrial. In May 2020, the Supreme Court upheld that interpretation ruling. It then considered separately whether the acquittal should be quashed and a retrial ordered.
Delivering judgment on 31 July 2020, Justice O’Donnell said the prosecution had to show both that a jury might reasonably be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of guilt on the evidence at trial and that a retrial would be in the interests of justice. The court assumed, for the purposes of the appeal, that the evidence could meet the first test. It did not assess the evidence in detail and made no finding of guilt.
The alleged offences concerned the management and conduct of the landfill between 2003 and 2008. The prosecution described the matters as serious and pointed to an estimate that about 500,000 tonnes of material had been dumped on an unlicensed part of the site. The judgment records that nearby residents had given evidence of nuisance. These were allegations and evidence referred to in considering the appeal, not findings that T.N. committed the offences.
The Supreme Court weighed the public interest in prosecuting serious environmental offences against the time that had passed. T.N. had been acquitted in 2015; the alleged conduct dated from 2003 to 2008; and the judgment said a retrial was unlikely to take place before 2021. O’Donnell J. described the case as borderline but said significant weight had to be given to the lapse of time under section 23 of the Criminal Procedure Act 2010.
The court concluded that it had not been shown that justice required a retrial of this individual. It reversed the Court of Appeal’s decision, affirmed the acquittal under section 23(11)(b), and refused to order a retrial. The ruling did not disturb the Supreme Court’s earlier conclusion on the legal meaning of “manager”; it resolved the separate question of whether this acquittal should be quashed.