The High Court has rejected Jason Heaphy’s challenge to the reactivation of a suspended three-year prison term, finding that the Circuit Court had jurisdiction to make the order in 2015. Ms Justice Faherty refused both his application under Article 40.4.2 of the Constitution and his judicial review claim.
Heaphy had received a 10-year sentence in 2008 for possession of cocaine, with the final three years suspended on a bond to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for three years after his release. He was released in February 2013. After a jury convicted him in November 2015 of drug offences committed in May that year, the Circuit Court revoked the suspended portion. It imposed two concurrent three-year sentences for the new offences, to run consecutively to the reactivated term.
Heaphy initially relied on a 2016 High Court ruling that found parts of the legislation governing reactivation of suspended sentences unconstitutional. At the hearing, however, his counsel accepted that his case did not qualify for relief on that basis. The challenge then focused on the 2008 sentencing record and whether the 2015 reactivation was lawful.
His legal team argued that a computer-generated document supplied to them showed the good-behaviour condition ran from the date of the 2008 order and had expired before the 2015 offences. They also argued there was no valid written 2008 order, and that the available records did not include a statutory requirement to keep the peace and be of good behaviour while in prison as well as after release.
The judge found that the computer-generated document was not the 2008 order: it had been produced after the 2015 proceedings, was unsigned and unsealed, and contained errors. She accepted that a handwritten document prepared and signed by the County Registrar on the day of the 2008 sentence recorded the order and had been given to the prison. Other records also showed the terms of the sentence, and the judge found there was evidence of those terms before the Circuit Court when it considered revocation.
The High Court acknowledged that the 2008 order did not state the statutory condition concerning good behaviour during the custodial period. But it held that this omission did not make the 2015 reactivation order defective in a way that deprived the Circuit Court of jurisdiction. The 2008 sentence had not been appealed or otherwise challenged, and no objection was made when revocation was considered in 2015.
The court therefore found Heaphy was not unlawfully detained and refused the constitutional relief and judicial review. It did not disturb the separate sentences imposed for the 2015 offences.