The Court of Criminal Appeal has refused an application by Joseph Fee for a certificate that would have allowed him to appeal to the Supreme Court on two proposed legal questions arising from his convictions for explosives offences.
The judgment, delivered by Macken J on 29 March 2007, concerns the certificate application only. The court had previously refused Fee leave to appeal his convictions in a decision delivered on 13 July 2006. It now concluded that neither proposed question met the statutory test of involving a point of law of exceptional public importance that it would be in the public interest to refer to the Supreme Court.
Fee had been tried with another accused before the Special Criminal Court on charges arising from events in County Louth in June 2003. He was found guilty of possessing explosive substances and possessing explosives with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury to property. He received concurrent sentences of seven and 10 years.
The first proposed question was whether possession of explosives in suspicious circumstances, contrary to section 4 of the Explosive Substances Act 1883, could by itself establish the intent required for an offence under section 3. The Court of Criminal Appeal said its earlier decision had not found that mere possession established that intent. It had considered the evidence of Fee’s actions and the surrounding circumstances, and found that the trial court was entitled to infer the required intent from the proven facts.
Those facts, as summarised in the certificate judgment, included explosives found in Fee’s car and about 500 kilograms at a premises he had just left. The court also referred to his involvement in obtaining sugar for the explosives and providing a cement mixer that was moved to the bomb-making premises. It said the trial court had found that the explosives could cause damage over several hundred metres, including glass breakage and minor property damage at up to 500 metres. The court noted that the minor-damage description applied to property damage at that distance.
The second proposed question concerned whether a court sitting without a jury had to expressly set out the facts and inferences supporting a conviction. The appeal court held that this issue had not been argued or decided in the proceedings before it, so it did not arise from its earlier decision and could not be certified under section 29.
The court refused the certificate application. The judgment did not reconsider the convictions or sentences; it decided only whether the proposed questions could be taken to the Supreme Court through the statutory certificate procedure.