The High Court granted relief to a man facing prosecution for dangerous driving causing serious bodily harm and four other offences, finding that the loss of a note left him potentially unfairly handicapped in his defence.
The charges relate to an alleged incident in Bray, Co Wicklow, on 24 August 2003. They were pending before Wicklow Circuit Criminal Court when Mr Justice Michael Peart delivered judgment on 22 July 2005.
The Book of Evidence included a statement from Paddy Moorehouse, who said he saw the applicant driving the car. Moorehouse’s statement also said a woman gave him a piece of paper bearing the car’s registration number. Two other witnesses were also said to have identified the applicant as the driver.
The Garda member to whom the note was handed swore that it was no longer available and that she had been unable to trace the woman said to have written the number. The applicant’s solicitor had also been told the note was lost.
The applicant argued that examining the handwriting against a known signature from Moorehouse could help test whether Moorehouse’s account of receiving the note was genuine. The applicant suspected fabrication and said the two other witnesses might be connected to Moorehouse. The judge stressed that the court was not deciding whether that theory was true; that would be for a jury if the case went to trial.
The judgment said the note’s importance was not the registration number itself, which would be hearsay against the applicant, but its potential to undermine Moorehouse’s credibility and possibly affect the other witnesses’ evidence. The court concluded that, taking the defence case at its highest, the note’s absence left the applicant without objective evidence to support his challenge to Moorehouse’s account, apart from giving evidence himself. It found the resulting potential prejudice could not be eliminated by directions from a trial judge or by the prosecution choosing not to call Moorehouse.
Mr Justice Peart held that the applicant was handicapped in his defence to the point of potential unfairness and, on the balance of probabilities, granted the relief sought. The judgment does not specify the form of relief or state that the pending charges were dismissed.