The Court of Appeal dismissed appeals by Brian Doolan and Liam Brien against a High Court refusal to admit them to bail while they pursued plenary proceedings challenging provisions of the Juries Act 1976. The applications also sought extensions of time to appeal because their notices of appeal had not been lodged within the prescribed period.
In a judgment delivered on 5 April 2016, Mr Justice Birmingham said the missed deadlines resulted from procedural errors and that the men had formed an intention to appeal immediately. The court considered the substance of the bail issue alongside the extension applications. It did not separately state an order granting an extension of time.
Doolan and Brien were serving prison sentences following convictions on indictment. Doolan was convicted in the Central Criminal Court in 2013 of rape, sexual assault and indecent assault and sentenced to 12 years, with two years suspended. Brien was convicted in the Circuit Criminal Court in Galway of sexual assault and sentenced to eight years. In 2015, the Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal against conviction but reduced his sentence to six years, with one year suspended.
Both men later brought habeas corpus proceedings under Article 40, arguing that their trials had been conducted before an improperly constituted jury. The High Court refused those applications on 8 August 2015. The men applied for bail on 20 August; the High Court refused bail on 26 August.
The appellants argued that restricting jury service to citizens excluded non-citizens and made juries unrepresentative. They also challenged statutory occupational exemptions and the power of County Registrars to excuse summoned jurors for “good reason”. Doolan said imprisonment limited his access to legal materials needed to prepare his case. Brien argued that the proceedings could be prolonged and might outlast his sentence.
The State argued that bail required a strong chance of success in the substantive proceedings and that the men had lost the right to challenge their trials by failing to object before the juries were sworn.
Applying the principles in DPP v Corbally, the Court of Appeal said the bail threshold was at least as high as the one for a convicted person seeking bail pending an appeal. It reserved the question of whether a higher threshold applied to bail pending plenary proceedings. The court described the jury-law arguments as interesting but said the men faced significant obstacles, including the presumption that the Act was constitutional and the timing of their challenge. It concluded they had not come close to meeting the Corbally test and ordered that the appeals be dismissed.