A Tullamore District Court judge acquitted Shane Finnerty of four road traffic charges after finding he drove about 550 metres to escape an immediate threat to himself and two injured friends in Birr.
Judge Andrew Cody delivered the judgment on 18 September 2023. He found the defence of duress applied to charges of driving while intoxicated, driving without insurance and failing to produce an insurance certificate. He also dismissed the careless driving charge, finding that conviction would be unjust in the case’s unusual circumstances.
The charges arose from an incident in the early hours of 27 November 2022. Finnerty’s friends Justin Cowen and Morgan Smith had been assaulted. They got into Cowen’s car and, according to their evidence, the assailants returned, shouted at them to get out and pulled at the doors. Finnerty said he drove because he feared for their safety and panicked.
Gardaí stopped the car after seeing it travel without lights and weave across the road. The judgment records that Finnerty’s breath test showed 67 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit stated by the judge for an experienced driver was 22 micrograms.
Judge Cody accepted the evidence that the friends had been threatened a second time and that Finnerty considered himself responsible for them. He found the threat was immediate, there was no reasonable avenue of escape or opportunity to seek Garda assistance, and a sober person of reasonable firmness would have driven to escape. He noted doubts that Finnerty and his friends had not told Gardaí about the second threat at the time, but concluded Finnerty had raised sufficient evidence of duress. The prosecution then had to disprove the defence beyond reasonable doubt and, the judge found, had not done so for the three charges.
On careless driving, the judge said driving without lights and swaying across the road created a serious risk to the occupants and the public. He found the duress defence no longer applied to the careless driving after about 550 metres. However, considering the injuries, the panic, the lack of other road users and the relatively short distance, he concluded it would be unjust to convict and dismissed that charge.