The Court of Appeal has dismissed Anthony Buck’s application to quash his conviction for the 1996 murder of David Nugent, ruling that the matters relied on were not new or newly discovered facts under section 2 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993.
The court delivered its decision on 11 December 2015 after hearing both Buck’s application and a motion by the Director of Public Prosecutions seeking its dismissal. The court said it had jurisdiction to dismiss such applications summarily, but that this power should be used sparingly. It dismissed Buck’s application as “without substance and without merit”.
Buck was convicted in the Central Criminal Court in 1998 of murdering Nugent in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, between the evening of 8 July and the morning of 9 July 1996. He received the mandatory life sentence and a 12-year sentence for robbery. The Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed his appeal, and the Supreme Court later dismissed a further appeal in DPP v Buck [2002] 2 I.R. 268.
Buck argued that the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in DPP v Gormley and White was a newly discovered fact that showed a miscarriage of justice. The Court of Appeal rejected that argument, saying a judgment delivered years after his trial and appeals could not be treated as a newly discovered fact. It also said it was not persuaded that Gormley and White had overruled the earlier Buck decision, noting that the later judgment referred to Buck with apparent approval.
The court distinguished the circumstances of the two cases. Buck had asked gardaí to contact solicitor Peter Reilly after his arrest at home in Clonmel on 14 July 1996. Efforts to contact a solicitor were unsuccessful until solicitor Ciaran Cleary attended the station. Cleary told Buck he was not obliged to make a statement. Buck made no admissions before Cleary arrived, but made admissions in three interviews afterwards.
Buck also argued that a garda in charge knew, or should have known, Reilly was conflicted because he had been consulted by the victim’s family. The court said solicitor access and the admissibility of Buck’s statements had been examined extensively at trial and in the earlier appeals. It also pointed to the absence of admissions before Cleary’s visit as an obstacle to establishing a causal link between any breach of rights and the statements.
The court dismissed the section 2 application. It did not quash the conviction.