The Supreme Court has upheld a jury’s verdict in a long-delayed sexual abuse prosecution, concluding that the trial judge was right to leave the case for the jury to decide.
In a judgment delivered on 19 December 2019, Mr Justice Peter Charleton said he concurred with judgments by Mr Justice Donal O’Donnell and Ms Justice Iseult O’Malley. The appeal concerned an accused identified in the judgment as “CC (County Clare Sexual Abuse)”. The judgment excerpt does not state the verdict or sentence.
The Supreme Court appeal followed a Court of Appeal case and a Circuit Criminal Court bill. Justice Charleton addressed how courts should assess claims that delay has made a criminal trial unfair. He said the ordinary forum for such an application is the trial court, where the judge can consider the specific evidence and decide whether the trial can proceed fairly.
The judgment describes the case as involving a reliable and admissible admission of guilt by the accused to his son. It also refers to the complainant’s evidence that the accused’s domestic partner led her, naked, to his bed when she was 11. That partner was dead by the time of the trial, and the judgment said her evidence would have been important. The accused had also told gardaí that neither the complainant nor her family had stayed in his home; the judgment says multiple pieces of evidence indicated that they had.
Justice Charleton concluded that the trial judge had rightly left the case to the jury and that the resulting verdict should stand. The excerpt does not give the jury’s verdict, the charges in detail or any sentence, and the Supreme Court passage is a concurrence with other judgments rather than a full account of the appeal’s reasoning.