The Court of Appeal has dismissed F.X.’s challenge to the Central Criminal Court’s decision to discharge him on a murder charge but not on an alternative serious-harm offence. The appeal concerned the scope of a hearing under section 4(8) of the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act 2006, after F.X. had been found unfit to stand trial.
The case arose from a stabbing at Tallaght Hospital on 11 May 2010. F.X., then a voluntary psychiatric patient, stabbed another patient in the neck with a steak knife. The victim suffered a severed spinal cord and died about eight months later. F.X. was charged with murder and sent to the Central Criminal Court for a fitness determination. In March 2012, Carney J. found him unfit to stand trial.
At a later hearing to determine whether F.X. had committed the alleged act, Butler J. found a reasonable doubt about whether the stabbing caused or contributed sufficiently to the victim’s death. He discharged F.X. on the murder count. However, Butler J. considered that a jury would have found F.X. guilty of assault causing serious harm and declined to discharge him on that offence.
F.X. appealed, arguing that he had been sent forward only for a fitness determination on the murder charge and that no lawfully preferred serious-harm charge was before the Central Criminal Court. The Director of Public Prosecutions argued that the court could consider alternative offences that might be available on a murder charge.
The Court of Appeal agreed that F.X. had been sent forward to the Central Criminal Court to determine fitness, not returned for trial. It held that, because he was found unfit, the usual provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act 1967 did not apply and a valid indictment could not be preferred at that stage. The indictment lodged in the case was therefore not valid, and there was no statutory power to add counts under that Act.
But the court said that this did not resolve whether the serious-harm offence could be considered in the section 4(8) hearing. That process examines whether the accused committed the act alleged; it is not a criminal trial. The court held that, on a murder charge, the judge could consider alternative offences that are constituent elements of murder and may be available as alternative verdicts at a trial, even if those offences were not separately charged in a valid indictment.
The Court of Appeal therefore dismissed the appeal and refused the orders F.X. sought. It did not overturn the discharge on the murder count.