The Court of Appeal refused Martin Quinn’s application for more time to lodge an appeal against sentence, finding that the evidence did not adequately explain the delay or set out an arguable basis for the appeal.
In an ex tempore judgment delivered on 5 February 2019, Ms Justice Baker said the application concerned sentences imposed after Quinn was convicted of robbery, taking a vehicle and a drugs offence. The judgment says he received a four-year sentence, comprising two and a half years on one count and one and a half years in respect of three offences. It does not specify how those terms were structured.
The court said the delay was about a year, and possibly 14 months, though it assessed the relevant period as a year after allowing for the long vacation. The affidavit evidence referred to communication difficulties with Quinn’s solicitor during the 28 days after sentence was imposed at the end of July 2017. The solicitor cited staff turnover and annual leave during August. The court said that accounted for only a small part of the delay and that there was no evidence explaining what happened from early September 2017 until July or October 2018.
The proposed appeal grounds were described as “wholly generic”. One ground suggested the trial judge had failed to consider the complainants’ ages. The judgment said they were in their early sixties and early twenties, and the court did not understand that ground as presented. The judges stressed that they were not deciding the merits of the proposed appeal, but said an application for an extension required some broad explanation of grounds that were at least arguably relevant.
The court also rejected the submission that Quinn would be prejudiced by his solicitors’ actions. It said the evidence addressed only the August 2017 period and did not show that Quinn had tried to contact a solicitor during the following year. The judgment noted that he did not say he wrote letters, made telephone calls or asked the prison governor to contact the solicitor.
The court criticised reliance in oral argument on counsel’s memory of events, saying an application of this kind had to be grounded in admissible affidavit evidence. It refused the extension of time. The judgment does not determine the proposed sentence appeal itself.