The Supreme Court held that a High Court judge hearing a summary criminal contempt motion was not sitting as the Central Criminal Court, leaving a separate question about the Director of Public Prosecutions’ appeal unresolved at this stage.
The judgment, delivered by Geoghegan J. on 5 March 2008, arose from an application over an Evening Herald article published on 2 December 2004. The DPP alleged that the publication was calculated to interfere with the trial process in a pending criminal case involving Patrick O’Dwyer and prejudice his right to a fair trial. The newspaper, Gerrard O’Regan and Ann-Marie Walsh were respondents. The source does not identify the latter two respondents’ roles beyond naming them as parties.
The DPP sought attachment and committal, or sequestration of the respondents’ assets, for contempt, as well as an order restraining further publications said to be calculated to interfere with the trial. The application was heard on affidavits in the High Court. Dunne J. refused it. The Supreme Court judgment describes the refusal as the order under appeal and notes that “acquittal” was a description used in the jurisdictional arguments, not the form of order made by the High Court.
The respondents objected to the Supreme Court hearing the appeal. Among their arguments, they relied on legislation abolishing appeals to the Supreme Court from decisions of the Central Criminal Court. They argued that Dunne J., in hearing the contempt motion, was legally exercising that court’s jurisdiction.
Geoghegan J. rejected that interpretation. Reading the relevant legislation in context and in light of the history of the Central Criminal Court, he concluded it concerned the High Court’s work trying indictable crimes, rather than summary contempt motions. He held that Dunne J.’s court was not the Central Criminal Court.
The judgment did not decide whether the Supreme Court could hear an appeal from the High Court’s refusal on other grounds, or whether an appeal could overturn what the respondents characterized as an acquittal on the merits. Geoghegan J. said those issues would depend on the court’s ruling on the Central Criminal Court question and would require further argument. The source provided is Geoghegan J.’s judgment; it does not state the final disposition of the appeal by the Supreme Court as a whole.