The Supreme Court would dismiss Eric Wansboro’s appeal seeking to quash a Circuit Court order that revoked suspended prison sentences, Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan concluded in a judgment delivered on 20 December 2018.
Her conclusion differed from that of Justice Dunne, whose judgment set out the factual and legal context. The case concerned whether Wansboro could rely in his judicial review proceedings on a later declaration that sections 99(9) and 99(10) of the Criminal Justice Act 2006 were unconstitutional. The judgment records that those provisions had been declared unconstitutional by the High Court in Moore & Ors v DPP in April 2016.
Wansboro had pleaded guilty to offences on Bill No. 298/2012 and, in November 2013, received custodial sentences suspended for three years: three years on one count and six months on each of two others, to run concurrently. In May 2014, he was driving a vehicle involved in a serious crash in which a passenger died and another was seriously injured. He later pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death and serious bodily harm on Bill No. 99/2015.
On 18 May 2015, the Circuit Court revoked the suspension of the earlier sentences and imposed five years and six months’ imprisonment for the later offence, to begin after the reactivated sentences. Wansboro appealed the sentences. He subsequently sought judicial review, primarily asking the High Court to quash the revocation order. The High Court refused that application in June 2017, and he appealed that refusal to the Supreme Court.
Finlay Geoghegan said the sentences were not final because Wansboro’s sentence appeal remained pending, but his convictions were final because he had not appealed them. She considered that the pending appeal alone did not entitle him to raise the constitutional issue. At the 2015 hearing, his counsel had asked the Circuit Court to deal with both matters together and apply the principle of totality when sentencing on the later offence. Finlay Geoghegan agreed with the High Court judge that Wansboro had acquiesced in the court’s exercise of jurisdiction and could not take an inconsistent position on appeal.
She also found no apprehension of real injustice. Wansboro was before the judge for sentencing on the later offence, and the judgment said the judge could have considered revoking the earlier suspension under a separate provision, section 99(17). No issue about that provision was raised in the judicial review or Supreme Court appeal. Whether it could bear on the pending sentence appeal was left to the Court of Appeal.
The Supreme Court appeal addressed the refusal of judicial review. Finlay Geoghegan would dismiss it; the judgment does not determine the separate pending appeal against the severity of the sentences.