The Supreme Court has directed the High Court to conduct a fresh Article 40 inquiry into the lawfulness of Stiofán Breathnach’s detention in Wheatfield Prison.
Breathnach was serving a 15-year sentence imposed by the Special Criminal Court in November 1993. He argued that aspects of his detention were unlawful, including his removal from Wheatfield to court and his subsequent return there.
Mr Justice Geoghegan said the legal basis of Breathnach’s claims was unclear. His unsworn statement asserted that the warrant underlying his imprisonment was “unexecuted”, but the judgment found nothing in that statement capable of calling into question the effectiveness of the Special Criminal Court’s sentencing order itself.
The court also rejected any suggestion that an irregularity concerning the particular prison in which Breathnach was held would necessarily entitle him to release. Geoghegan J said that if a convicted prisoner were unlawfully detained in one institution, the authorities could move him to the correct prison and thereby place him in lawful custody.
However, the judge concluded that one part of Breathnach’s statement raised enough of an issue about the lawfulness of his detention in Wheatfield to justify a conditional order for an Article 40 inquiry.
The matter was therefore sent back to the High Court. The State was to make a proper return showing, if it could, the lawful basis for Breathnach’s detention. The judgment said that if the documents produced established lawful detention as of the return date, no further inquiry might be necessary.
The Supreme Court also struck from the proceedings an attempt to name a High Court judge as a respondent and criticised abusive allegations contained in the appeal papers. It declined to reopen earlier challenges to the established procedure used for preliminary prisoner applications.