The High Court has refused an application by Salomon Yeagar to quash his assault conviction, ruling that the Circuit Court order he challenged was spent and could not be revived.
Mr Justice Charleton delivered the judgment on 20 March 2012. The judicial review concerned a four-month prison sentence imposed by the Circuit Court on appeal from the District Court. Yeagar argued that he had spent about 21 weeks on remand before his District Court conviction and, with time served after appealing, had effectively served more than the six-month statutory maximum for assault.
The assault charge arose from an incident at Dublin Airport on 28 April 2010. The judgment said Garda Sergeant Michael Griffin approached Yeagar after noticing he was not joining the immigration queues. Yeagar gave a different name and said he was Liberian and had no passport, the judgment said. While being escorted back towards the arrivals gate, he dropped a forged Guatemalan document. The judgment said he then struck Sergeant Griffin from behind, causing him to fall on stairs.
The District Court convicted Yeagar on 6 September 2010. The Circuit Court affirmed the conviction on appeal and ordered four months’ imprisonment beginning on 30 March 2011, allowing credit for time served. The High Court said Yeagar had spent one month in custody serving the District Court sentence while awaiting the appeal.
A temporary warrant referred to four months’ imprisonment with credit for time served. After Yeagar’s solicitor argued that he had already served the equivalent of the sentence, the prison governor released him. The final committal warrant later specified that allowance was for any part of the original sentence already served. The High Court said the release had been early and in error, but Yeagar could not be imprisoned again under that warrant.
The judgment noted that a sentencing court may, where the interests of justice require, take remand time into account. But it said the High Court was bound by precedent that time on remand need not necessarily be included in the sentence. The judge expressly left open whether failing to account for remand time could ever amount to a jurisdictional error warranting judicial review.
The application was refused on discretionary grounds as well: the Circuit Court order was spent, and quashing the conviction over a sentence-related argument would be pointless, the judge said. The court did not disturb the conviction or rule on whether remand time had to be credited in this case.