The Court of Appeal has rejected a prosecution appeal seeking a retrial for a respondent who was acquitted of 13 counts of gross indecency, affirming the acquittal despite finding that the trial judge’s direction was wrong in law.
The appeal under section 23 of the Criminal Procedure Act 2010 concerned a directed acquittal at the close of the complainant’s evidence in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in April 2023. The trial judge had concluded that the prosecution’s presentation of the evidence, without clarifying when the alleged events began, had made the trial fundamentally unfair to the defence.
The Court of Appeal said the prosecution counsel had asked when the complainant first met the respondent, but did not follow up when the answer did not clarify the timing. It found no deliberate attempt by prosecution counsel to present the evidence unfairly. The appeal court also said defence counsel was mistaken in telling the trial judge that the question had never been asked, and found the defence had not been disadvantaged by the timing issue remaining unresolved during direct evidence.
The court held that the application for a directed acquittal was unjustified and that the trial judge had erred in granting it. It also concluded that, on the evidence heard before the trial was halted, a jury might reasonably have been satisfied of guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The court noted, however, that the trial had ended before other available evidence and the timing issues had been explored.
In deciding whether to order a retrial, the appeal court considered the sharp conflict between the complainant’s account to Gardaí of repeated abuse beginning before he entered St Laurence’s and records indicating that he was detained there from January 1976 to January 1977, while the respondent was assigned to the relevant parish from September 1976. The respondent denied sexual abuse in a Garda interview, while describing some later sexual encounters. The court said a jury at retrial would hear the competing accounts, but it was doubtful a jury would be satisfied of guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
The court also considered the age of the allegations, which related to 1977 and 1978, and the passage of 47 or 48 years since the earliest date in the indictment. It was not persuaded that the interests of justice would be served by quashing the acquittal and ordering a retrial. It therefore rejected the Director of Public Prosecutions’ application and affirmed the acquittal.