The Court of Appeal dismissed Alan Freeman’s appeal against conviction, finding that the trial judge was entitled to refuse his application to withdraw a guilty plea to theft. It also varied his sentence, suspending the final two years of the seven-year term imposed for the offence.
Freeman had pleaded guilty on the fifteenth day of his 2013 trial at Kilkenny Circuit Criminal Court. He later argued that his plea was not voluntary, alleging that Detective Superintendent Hayes had urged him to plead guilty and promised help with sentencing and his existing suspended sentence. Hayes denied offering inducements and said their contact concerned sensitive matters unrelated to the trial.
The appeal against conviction proceeded only on the claim that the Garda officer’s contact made the trial unsatisfactory or amounted to an abuse of process. Freeman’s separate challenge to the evidence from his arrest, detention and interviews was not argued. The prosecution said that ground was moot after the guilty plea, and Freeman accepted that the plea would prevent him raising it if his other ground failed.
The court described the contact as unusual and said it would have been better if it had not occurred. But it had not seen sensitive documents considered by the trial judge, so its assessment of that material was limited. The trial judge had found that the discussions concerned matters unconnected with the trial and concluded there were no exceptional circumstances warranting withdrawal of the plea. The Court of Appeal held that decision was open to him and dismissed the conviction appeal.
On sentence, the court noted that Freeman pleaded guilty at an advanced stage and then attempted to withdraw the plea and challenge the recorded conviction, substantially reducing the credit ordinarily given for a plea. His theft sentence had to run consecutively to six years activated from an earlier eight-year suspended sentence. The Circuit Court had imposed seven years for the theft, producing a total of thirteen years.
The Court of Appeal found no error in the thirteen-year overall figure, but applied the principles of totality and proportionality. It suspended the final two years of that total, leaving five years of the theft sentence to be served consecutively to the six-year activated sentence. The suspension is conditional on Freeman entering a €100 bond to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for two years after his release.