The High Court has refused Patrick Irwin’s application to stop his criminal trial, ruling that the return of a co-accused’s Mercedes could not have yielded evidence useful to his defence.
Kearns P. delivered the judgment on 23 April 2010 in judicial review proceedings against the Director of Public Prosecutions and Judge Patricia Ryan. The court refused the relief sought. It did not determine the criminal charges, which remained allegations for trial.
Irwin faced a number of serious drug charges arising from events alleged to have occurred at Doon, Boyle, Co Roscommon, on 2 October 2006. The prosecution case, as set out in the judgment, alleged that he travelled from his house in Sligo to meet Kenneth McEneaney in a Mercedes. Garda witnesses were expected to say they saw Irwin enter the car carrying a weighted plastic bag. Police later found a bag said to contain one kilogram of cocaine and another said to contain €55,000 in cash inside the Mercedes. Irwin denied possessing the cocaine in a garda interview. The judgment stressed that he was presumed innocent.
Irwin sought a forensic examination of the Mercedes, but his solicitor’s request came in November 2007, after the car had been returned to McEneaney in October 2006. The judgment records that police had asked Irwin’s then solicitors in 2006 whether they wanted either vehicle examined. In November 2006, the solicitors asked for confirmation that both vehicles would be preserved, but the court said no further interest in examining the Mercedes was shown until the trial was imminent.
The trial had been transferred to Dublin Circuit Court in November 2007. Irwin sought leave for judicial review in January 2009; the High Court hearing concluded in April 2010, about three and a half years after the alleged offence. Kearns P. criticised the delay and said the application had kept the prosecution in abeyance.
The court found no explanation of what useful material an examination might have uncovered. Given the alleged eyewitness identifications, the gloves Irwin was said to have worn, and his own account that he had briefly sat in the Mercedes, the judge said the car’s retention could not have produced information of value to the defence. He described the application as “completely without merit” and refused relief.
Kearns P. also criticised routine, unmeritorious applications to halt trials and said alleged unfairness from missing evidence should usually be dealt with by the trial court. He said advance applications to prohibit a trial should be brought promptly and only where an unavoidably unfair trial must clearly follow.