The Supreme Court has refused to prohibit the prosecution of Warren Higgins on a charge of assault causing serious harm, finding that the prosecution’s handling of an earlier signed plea process did not make a trial on the more serious charge an abuse of process.
The charge relates to an alleged assault in Gurranabraher, County Cork, on 23 June 2008. The judgment said a young man was assaulted and stabbed in the face with a broken bottle. Gardaí believed he had permanently lost the sight of one eye.
Higgins was first charged with a section 3 offence under the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997. He signed a guilty plea on 6 August 2008 and was sent forward to the Circuit Court for sentence. After an ophthalmologist’s report confirmed the injured party had lost sight in one eye, the Director of Public Prosecutions directed a section 4 charge. Higgins was charged with that offence on 24 September.
Higgins argued that the further prosecution should be stopped because the signed plea barred it, the DPP was estopped from bringing the section 4 charge, or continuing with it would be an abuse of process. At the Supreme Court hearing, his counsel did not pursue the first two arguments. The appeal was considered on abuse of process alone.
Justice O’Donnell said the DPP had power to bring the further charge, but criticised the way the case was handled. The evidence about the original direction was limited, and the court was not given a clear account of what happened or why the prosecution indicated willingness to accept signed pleas while still considering a more serious charge. The judgment said that approach risked confusion and could have created difficulties if the section 3 plea had proceeded to sentence.
The Court nevertheless held that “clumsiness or lack of forethought or simple error” by the prosecution, without more, could not justify stopping the trial. It distinguished the exceptional circumstances in *Eviston v DPP*, where a decision not to prosecute had been positively communicated and later reversed without an explanation, alongside other factors. Here, the judgment noted, the accused had not sworn an affidavit saying he believed the signed plea ended the possibility of prosecution or that the later charge caused significant stress. The events had also unfolded over a short period while proceedings remained fluid.
The Supreme Court dismissed the challenge to the section 4 prosecution. The judgment did not decide the separate questions about autrefois convict or estoppel, or what might have followed if Higgins had been sentenced on the section 3 charge.