The Supreme Court has affirmed J.C.’s acquittal after concluding that the interests of justice did not require a retrial, despite an earlier ruling that compelling evidence had been wrongly excluded at his trial.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Clarke on 22 June 2015, addressed the second stage of the Director of Public Prosecutions’ appeal under section 23 of the Criminal Procedure Act 2010. In its earlier decision, a four-to-three majority had found that an appeal could be brought and that the trial judge had erroneously excluded compelling evidence. Those findings alone did not permit the acquittal to be overturned: the Court also had to be satisfied that a retrial was in the interests of justice.
J.C. had been acquitted in the Circuit Court of six robbery offences involving three incidents. The judgment said an imitation firearm was alleged to have been used. The excluded evidence concerned a confession. The trial judge’s ruling had applied the test in D.P.P. v Kenny, and the Supreme Court majority had since rejected that test in favour of a new one. Any retrial would therefore assess admissibility under the new test.
The DPP argued that a fair retrial could take place, that the alleged offences were serious and potentially affected victims, and that the changed understanding of the law supported allowing a retrial. J.C.’s counsel accepted that a retrial could be conducted fairly, but argued that fairness was only one part of the overall assessment. The defence also relied on the time elapsed, the fact that other accused had obtained acquittals on similar Kenny/Damache arguments, and the different legal basis that would govern a retrial.
The Court noted that about four years had passed since the events giving rise to the alleged offences and three years since J.C.’s acquittal. It gave those periods some weight against a retrial, while observing that neither side was at fault for the time taken. The alleged offences were serious, but the Court had no detailed information about their circumstances or their effects on the victims.
Justice Clarke considered it a weighty factor against a retrial that J.C. could be singled out after others had obtained the benefit of similar arguments. A retrial under the new legal test was also materially different from correcting an error while applying the law understood to govern the original trial. The Court gave some weight to the possibility of a fair retrial and to victims’ interests, but found those considerations insufficient to outweigh the factors against ordering one.
The Court’s order was to affirm the acquittal. It did not order a retrial. The judgment concerns the interests-of-justice stage of the appeal; it does not amount to a new trial verdict on the charges.