The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by Imran Ramzan against his conviction for possessing cocaine for sale or supply, rejecting his challenges to limits on defence expert evidence and to the lawfulness of his Garda detention.
A jury convicted Ramzan in January 2012 of an offence arising from events on 14 September 2006 at Station Road, Lusk, Co Dublin. The Court of Appeal heard that gardaí watching a meeting in a factory car park saw items passed to occupants of a lorry. A search found 8.355kg of cocaine, which the judgment said was worth an estimated €485,000, and about €85,000 in cash. Ramzan was the lorry driver. During detention, he made admissions including that he knew there were drugs in the lorry.
Ramzan argued that the trial judge wrongly refused permission for neuropsychologist Dr Niall Pender and other medical specialists to give evidence about the effects of a serious head injury he had suffered in a 2005 road traffic accident. He also challenged the admission of his statements, arguing that the prosecution had not produced the written instruction appointing the Garda member in charge at Balbriggan station.
The appeal court said the trial judge was wrong to treat the statutory requirement for evidence from a consultant psychiatrist in support of an insanity defence as excluding other experts. It held that at least one consultant psychiatrist must give evidence for that defence, but other witnesses may provide relevant supporting context. The psychiatrist need not meet the narrower definition in the Mental Health Act 2001.
However, the court concluded that the expert evidence applications were correctly refused in the circumstances. The proposed psychiatrist’s report did not support the statutory conditions for an insanity verdict, and no relevant contextual evidence from the other proposed experts had been demonstrated. At trial, Ramzan later withdrew the insanity defence and did not call the psychiatrist. The court also upheld the later refusal to allow Dr Pender to testify, finding his proposed evidence had not been shown to be relevant and could intrude on matters for the jury. It found no fundamental unfairness in the prosecution’s use of medical reports during cross-examination and said discharging the jury was not warranted.
On detention, the Court of Appeal was not persuaded that the trial judge erred in finding Garda Thomas Hartigan had been properly appointed member in charge, despite the missing written instruction from 2006. The court said the trial judge could also have admitted the statements under section 7(3) of the Criminal Justice Act 1984 if necessary, but found that alternative was not needed.
The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal against conviction. Its decision addressed the challenged rulings and left the jury’s conviction in place.