The High Court has refused to prohibit the summary prosecution of Paul O’Donoghue on four drug charges, despite finding that the four-year delay in serving the summonses was excessive and partly blameworthy.
In a judgment delivered on 22 January 2014, Ms Justice Baker dismissed O’Donoghue’s judicial review application. She said he had shown no actual prejudice from the delay, and that the factors favouring prohibition did not outweigh the public interest in allowing the prosecution to proceed. Her decision was expressly without prejudice to his right to ask the trial judge to consider whether the trial would be fair.
The charges relate to an alleged search at O’Donoghue’s then home on Model Farm Road, Cork, on 13 January 2009. Gardaí said cocaine and cannabis were found. He was arrested, interviewed and released without charge that day. Four summonses were issued in September 2009, but were not served until November 2012, when they were served on his father at an address in Midleton.
The judgment records that the initial delay before the summonses were issued was attributed to waiting for a forensic laboratory certificate, and was not blameworthy. Baker found culpable delay in the year after an unsuccessful service attempt in January 2010, when gardaí had information that O’Donoghue might move to Australia but did not act quickly to establish his whereabouts. He spent about a year in Australia from February 2011 and returned in January 2012. The judge found no blame in his time abroad and no suggestion he had gone to avoid prosecution. She also found an unexplained, blameworthy four-month delay after he came to gardaí’s attention in April 2012.
O’Donoghue did not claim that memories had been impaired, witnesses were unavailable, or that he had suffered anxiety or imprisonment because of the delay. The judge nonetheless considered his separate right to an expeditious trial and balanced it against the community’s interest in prosecuting alleged crime.
Baker treated admissions made during O’Donoghue’s interview as significant in the balance, particularly for two of the four charges. She declined to assess whether the interview amounted to admissions on the other charges. The judgment noted that he could still ask the trial judge to rule on whether the admissions were admissible.
The judge concluded that the delay, without actual prejudice or other personal factors identified in the case law, did not justify the High Court’s exceptional intervention. The summary trial may proceed, subject to any fairness application before the trial court.