The Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed P. A.’s appeal over the admission of statements made during a Garda interview, after treating his application for leave as the hearing of the appeal. The court concluded that the circumstances relied on, considered together, did not make the admissions inadmissible.
P. A. had been charged under section 12(a) of the Criminal Law Act 1976 with knowingly making a false statement tending to show that an offence had been committed. The charge concerned a formal statement he made at Kevin Street Garda Station on 18 June 2003, alleging that he had been sexually abused by a priest. The judgment describes the alleged offences in the charge particulars as indecent assault and buggery during approximately February to May 1981.
At trial, the first five days were spent in a hearing on whether admissions in a third interview on 20 March 2004 could be used as evidence. The trial judge found the admissions voluntary and not in breach of P. A.’s constitutional rights. P. A. challenged that decision, arguing that the interview was affected by pressure connected with the questioning of his seriously ill mother, his sister’s visit to the station, earlier alleged threats, the length of interviews and a failure to record the third interview.
The appeal court said the trial judge had rejected P. A.’s and his sister’s evidence about the alleged pressure and was better placed to assess witness credibility. It found that P. A.’s limited prior involvement with Gardaí did not, by itself, make his admissions involuntary. It also accepted that the first two interviews were not excessively long or oppressive, noting the breaks between them and before the third interview.
The third interview was not electronically recorded because the station’s only equipped interview room was in use. The member-in-charge did not enter the required note in the custody record or give evidence of the grounds for proceeding without a recording. The appeal court found that the room was in use for nearly all of the interview and that only two hours remained in P. A.’s detention. It held that these circumstances justified proceeding without recording facilities. It also noted that statutory provisions stated that regulatory non-compliance did not by itself make a statement inadmissible.
The court considered the recording failures alongside the other circumstances raised and found their cumulative effect did not render the statement inadmissible. It dismissed the appeal. The judgment does not state the result of the trial on the underlying charge.