The Court of Appeal has dismissed Mariana Kovacs’s appeal against a ruling that allowed her one-month prison sentence to take effect after an earlier three-month sentence was declared void.
The appeal concerned two committal warrants issued by Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on 15 June 2015. The first related to a three-month sentence for theft from Marks and Spencer in Dundrum Shopping Centre. The sentence had initially been suspended. The second warrant covered a consecutive one-month sentence for a later theft at TK Maxx in Blanchardstown Shopping Centre.
In the High Court, Baker J held that the first warrant was void because Kovacs had not been put on her election before the original District Court conviction. The judge nevertheless found the second warrant valid, saying detention under it could begin immediately. Kovacs appealed that conclusion and the award of 65% of the costs. The prison governor’s cross-appeal against the ruling on the first warrant was withdrawn before the appeal hearing.
Kovacs argued that the one-month sentence could not begin because its warrant said it would be served when the three-month sentence expired. Since the earlier sentence had been void from the outset, she submitted, it could not expire. She also argued that the warrant did not let prison staff determine the sentence’s duration or how time already spent in custody should be counted.
The Court of Appeal said the only issue before it was whether the second warrant was sufficiently clear and certain. Other issues were moot. It had previously allowed the appeal to proceed despite mootness because the interaction between an invalid first sentence and a consecutive sentence raised a point of law of exceptional public importance. The court also refused a late application to extend the appeal grounds.
The appeal judges interpreted “expiration” as the time when something ends or ceases to be valid. They held that the three-month sentence expired, for the purpose of the second warrant, when the High Court ruled on 30 June 2015 that it was void. The one-month sentence was therefore activated, and the governor could detain Kovacs under that warrant from then, subject to credit for any time already served.
The court said calculating that credit was a matter for the governor and did not make the warrant uncertain. It dismissed the appeal, leaving the High Court’s decision in place. The judgment does not state the final release date or resolve any separate calculation of time served.