The High Court has restrained the prosecution of Austin Quigley for allegedly driving without insurance and without a licence, finding that allowing the cases to proceed would breach constitutional fairness.
In a judgment delivered on 15 March 2019, Mr Justice Garrett Simons held that the unusual sequence of events justified the High Court’s exceptional intervention. The court also extended the time for bringing the judicial review application, insofar as that was necessary.
The charges relate to an alleged incident on 9 May 2017. They were based on a District Court order disqualifying Mr Quigley from driving for four years after a 2016 conviction for driving while under the influence of an intoxicant. The prosecution alleged that the disqualification meant he had no valid licence and invalidated his employer’s insurance policy for a school bus.
Mr Quigley had appealed the 2016 conviction and entered a recognisance, which stayed the disqualification order. His appeal was adjourned from December 2016, but the rescheduled date of 6 April 2017 was apparently not communicated to his solicitor. The Circuit Court struck out the appeal that day after no one appeared, ending the stay. Mr Quigley was arrested on 9 May.
The judgment records that, in the first week of May, the solicitor was told by someone in the State Solicitor’s office that the appeal remained outstanding and was likely to be listed in July. The appeal was reinstated by consent in July 2017 and allowed on 21 March 2018. The prosecution did not adduce evidence or oppose the appeal, and the disqualification order was set aside.
The DPP argued that the judicial review application was late, that the Circuit Court had jurisdiction to strike out the appeal, and that any fairness argument should first be made in the District Court. The judge accepted that the Circuit Court acted within its jurisdiction and that reinstatement did not revive the stay. He nevertheless found the application was made within time; alternatively, he granted an extension. The applicant’s attempts to clarify whether the prosecution would continue, and the State Solicitor’s failure to provide a substantive response, were relevant to that decision.
On fairness, the judge emphasised that the State Solicitor had agreed to the original adjournment, there was no evidence the new date was sent to the solicitor, and the office later indicated that the appeal remained outstanding. He found that the prosecution relied on a disqualification order that had since been set aside, in circumstances where the appeal-date confusion had been contributed to by the State Solicitor’s office.
The judge concluded that judicial review was the appropriate route because the alleged unfairness arose from the DPP’s decision to pursue the prosecution, rather than from trial procedure, and the District Court’s power to refuse conviction in these circumstances was unclear. He ordered relief under paragraphs (d)(1) and (d)(4) of the statement of grounds, including restraint of the prosecution and a declaration that further prosecution would be fundamentally unfair and breach fair-trial and fair-procedure rights.