The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by John Adams over a British government certificate which permitted his prosecution in Ireland for rape and sexual assault charges arising in the Dundalk area.
Adams had been extradited from Northern Ireland in May 1997 on 35 unrelated charges under theft, forgery and criminal justice legislation. He pleaded guilty the following day and received concurrent three-month sentences.
After his release from the Curragh Prison on 4 August 1997, he was arrested at Newbridge Railway Station and later charged with 31 rape and sexual assault offences involving three complainants from the Dundalk area. By the time of the Supreme Court judgment, he was awaiting trial in the Central Criminal Court on 15 rape and 16 sexual assault counts.
Because those alleged offences were not among the matters for which Adams had been extradited, the rule of specialty meant he could not be prosecuted for them without consent from the UK authorities. The British Home Secretary issued the required certificate on 29 July 1997.
Adams sought judicial review in Ireland, including an order quashing that certificate. The High Court had already removed the Home Secretary from the proceedings and set aside attempted service on him.
Ms Justice Catherine McGuinness, delivering the Supreme Court judgment, upheld that result. She held that the Home Secretary’s authority to issue the certificate came from British law and his office under the British constitutional system, not from Irish legislation.
The court said Irish courts could not exercise supervisory judicial review over the administrative or executive actions of a foreign government minister carried out abroad. It therefore dismissed Adams’s appeal and affirmed the High Court order.
The ruling did not determine the merits of Adams’s challenge to his prosecution. The court said he remained free to pursue his claims in Ireland against the Director of Public Prosecutions and the District Judge.