The High Court has prohibited the prosecution of a woman over two charges arising from an alleged plot, when she was 15, to have her father seriously assaulted in 1988. The court found that the proposed trial, more than two decades after an arrest warrant was issued, would be unfair because the applicant was not responsible for the delay and the State had seriously breached its duty to deal with young offenders promptly.
The judicial review concerned charges of assault causing grievous bodily harm with intent to murder, and assault causing grievous bodily harm with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. The applicant denied that prosecuting her after so long would be compatible with her constitutional rights. The Director of Public Prosecutions opposed the application, citing the seriousness of the allegations and the public interest in a trial.
The allegations arose from an assault on the applicant’s father at the family home in Crumlin, Dublin, in May 1988. He suffered serious head injuries and died later that year. Statements attributed to the applicant and others alleged that she and her mother had arranged for men to attack him. The applicant did not address the substance of her alleged admissions in her affidavits, but disputed aspects of how they were obtained. The court did not decide whether those admissions would be admissible at a criminal trial.
The DPP directed that the applicant be charged in July 1989, after the men accused of carrying out the attack had pleaded guilty. An arrest warrant was obtained the following month, but was not executed before the applicant and her mother left Ireland. The applicant was 16 and, the judge found, had not been told that a decision had been made or was likely to be made to charge her. She later lived openly in England and returned to Ireland in 2004. Gardaí located her in County Cavan in 2010, but she was not charged until December 2011.
The State argued that the applicant’s departure caused the delay and that Gardaí had made reasonable efforts to find her. The judge rejected the portrayal of her as having fled to evade prosecution, and found significant, blameworthy delay that had not been adequately explained. The court also criticised the delay after she was located and found no significant new evidence that explained it.
The judge did not find that the applicant had established prejudice from her aunt’s possible unavailability as a witness about the alleged interview. However, the court concluded that the decisive consideration was the breach of the special duty to deal with young people’s cases close to the time of the alleged offences. Trying her as an adult for alleged words and intentions expressed at 15 would have a wholly different character from a trial at the time, and any sentencing process would also be fundamentally different.
The court therefore granted relief preventing the prosecution from proceeding. It did not determine the applicant’s guilt or rule on the admissibility of the alleged admissions.