The High Court has refused Pat Jennings’s application to prevent a further trial on charges of assault causing harm and false imprisonment, holding that the trial judge was entitled to discharge the jury when a juror’s impending absence made it unfair or unsafe to continue.
Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan delivered the judgment on 7 April 2008. Jennings faced two charges arising from an alleged incident at the Travellers Friend Hotel in Castlebar in the early hours of 27 December 2003. He and two others were alleged to have assaulted Thomas McIntyre, causing him harm, and to have falsely imprisoned him. These were allegations; the judgment did not determine guilt.
The prosecution case in the first trial closed on 1 June 2005. The defence applied for a direction, and the trial judge said he would rule the next morning. A juror due to fly to Dubai was released. The court then learned that another juror would be unavailable from the following Tuesday. Defence counsel said the trial was unlikely to finish before then if the applications for directions failed, and they were reluctant to ask the juror to cancel his plans or to continue with ten jurors. The trial judge discharged the jury, saying it would not be fair or safe to proceed with ten. He treated the pending applications as moot and did not deliver a ruling.
Jennings argued that the prosecution had failed to call or make available four security staff whose interview memoranda appeared in the Book of Evidence. He said he had understood they would be called and did not arrange for their attendance. The State Solicitor’s affidavit and the transcript, however, recorded that the prosecution had said the four were not State prosecution witnesses and that it did not rely on their evidence.
Justice Sheehan found that the trial judge had approached the jury issue correctly and was entitled to terminate the trial when he did. The transcript did not show that the judge had reached a decision on the direction application, and neither Jennings nor his co-accused objected when the jury was discharged.
The court also rejected the claim that another trial would be unfair. Jennings had undergone one trial, which ended before the jury considered the facts. Although a further trial would be onerous, the court held that the point had not been reached where a retrial should be prohibited. It distinguished a case concerning repeated trials after jury disagreements.
On the witnesses issue, the judgment noted that the four people were not listed as witnesses in the Book of Evidence and that the first trial ended before the jury considered its verdict. The court said the new trial court would be bound by existing authority on calling witnesses. It found Jennings had not established a real or serious risk of an unfair trial and refused the application.