The Court of Appeal has quashed Barry Ring's conviction for assaulting a Garda on Patrick Street in Tullamore after finding that prosecutors should not have been permitted to question him about his previous convictions.
Ring had been convicted on 11 December 2012 of assault causing harm against Garda Cullinane.
After the street incident, Ring was arrested and brought to the local Garda station. During interviews he alleged that Gardaí had punched, kicked and stood on him and had attempted to strangle him. Those claims concerned both what Ring said happened on Patrick Street and what he alleged occurred later in the station.
The prosecution introduced portions of Ring's Garda interviews during its case. Ring then gave evidence himself and broadly repeated his account.
The dispute on appeal concerned section 1 of the Criminal Justice (Evidence) Act 1924. That legislation can protect an accused who gives evidence from being questioned about previous convictions unless, through the way the defence is conducted, that protection is lost or the accused has effectively “thrown away his shield”.
The prosecution had argued at trial that Ring's allegations against Gardaí meant he had lost that protection. The trial judge agreed and allowed cross-examination concerning his previous convictions.
The Court of Appeal found that approach was wrong. It accepted Ring's argument that the street incident and his allegations about what followed at the Garda station were not separate matters. They were closely connected in place and time and formed part of a single transaction for the purposes of his defence.
Ring was entitled to argue that he had not been the aggressor and that aggression had instead come from the Garda side. The appeal court stressed that whether a jury would ultimately have accepted that account was a separate question.
Because Ring had not lost the statutory protection against questioning about previous convictions, the cross-examination should not have been permitted. His conviction was therefore quashed.