The High Court quashed a man’s burglary conviction after finding that the charge sheet failed to identify the arrestable offence said to have followed his entry into a building as a trespasser.
In a judgment delivered on 9 July 2010, President of the High Court Kearns ruled that describing the alleged arrestable offence as “burglary” did not adequately particularise the charge under section 12(1)(b) and (3) of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001.
The man had been arrested in March 2009 on suspicion of burglary. The judgment says he admitted to Gardaí that he had entered a building intending to steal tools to sell. He was charged with burglary and a separate offence under section 13 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984; the latter charge was not at issue in the judicial review.
At the District Court hearing on 4 December 2009, his counsel argued that the charge sheet had to specify the arrestable offence alleged, rather than repeat the word “burglary”. The prosecution submitted that the reference to burglary was sufficient and that the man understood the charge. The District Judge ruled the charge sheet valid. The man then changed his plea to guilty and received a 10-month prison sentence. He had completed the sentence by the time the judicial review was heard.
Kearns held that burglary can involve offences other than theft, including criminal damage or assault causing harm. Naming burglary itself as the arrestable offence was therefore meaningless and left the charge insufficiently specified. The judgment relied on the Supreme Court’s earlier decision in *The State (M) v O’Brien*, which stressed that a burglary charge must identify the intended offence.
The court also considered whether the man’s guilty plea and conduct should prevent it from granting relief. Kearns said he was sceptical that the plea directly resulted from the District Judge’s ruling, and was not persuaded that the case required relief as a matter of course. But the charge’s validity had been challenged at the outset of the hearing, rather than held back until after the case concluded. The judge found that the man’s conduct did not disentitle him to relief.
The High Court granted the requested certiorari and quashed the District Court conviction order of 4 December 2009. The ruling concerned the defect in the charge sheet and the circumstances in which the challenge was raised.