A Supreme Court judge has rejected the argument that an accused person’s constitutional language rights require a jury able to hear a criminal trial in Irish without relying on interpretation.
In a judgment delivered on 27 February 2014, John MacMenamin J. said he agreed with the order proposed by Clarke J. to dismiss Peadar Ó Maicín’s appeal, although his reasoning differed from that of Clarke J. The seven-page judgment records MacMenamin J.’s reasons; it does not state the Court’s formal order.
Ó Maicín faced charges of assault and producing a broken whiskey bottle during a fight in a manner likely to intimidate and capable of causing serious injury. The alleged offences were said to have occurred in South Connemara. He sought a jury drawn from an area where Irish was widely spoken, arguing that this would vindicate his rights as a native Irish speaker. The judgment says his trial was to take place in the Circuit Criminal Court in Galway.
MacMenamin J. accepted evidence from sociolinguist Dr Conchúr Ó Giollagáin about Irish use in parts of Galway, including estimates of daily use and the ability to understand legal matters. He said the evidence was uncontested. But he considered that the proposed jury district would go beyond making a bilingual jury likely: it would exclude people who were not fully confident hearing legal evidence and argument in Irish.
The judge said established decisions required jury pools to be broadly representative of the community, rather than restricted to selected groups. He found that those principles applied regardless of where a trial took place or the language spoken by an accused person. In his view, the Court could not require the executive and legislature to create a Galway jury district tailored along linguistic lines.
The judgment also set out protections MacMenamin J. said Ó Maicín was entitled to receive: he could conduct his case and give evidence in Irish, receive relevant prosecution documents and rules in Irish, and have English-language evidence and prosecution material translated for him. The judge noted that an order had been made for the trial judge to be sufficiently proficient in Irish to work without an interpreter.
MacMenamin J. concluded that these protections did not establish a right to an all-Irish-speaking jury. He said the appeal should be dismissed.