Sandra Higgins not retried over serious harm charge

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

The DPP entered a nolle prosequi against Sandra Higgins at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on 12 July 2018, ending the case without a fifth trial. The proceedings were reported on 13 July 2018.

Higgins had pleaded not guilty to intentionally or recklessly causing serious harm to a baby girl at her Cavan home on 28 March 2012. The child survived. Higgins retained the presumption of innocence.

Her first trial, in June 2015, ended when the jury was discharged after failing to reach a verdict. A retrial in May 2016 collapsed after it emerged that a jury had been searching online for information about a witness.

In January 2018, a jury was discharged from a third trial after an unspecified legal issue arose before the trial properly opened. The fourth trial process collapsed in June 2018 after emails between expert witnesses had not been disclosed to the defence. The report said the contact between the experts was not itself the contentious issue; the problem was that it had not been disclosed to the defence.

The decision ended a six-year criminal justice process without a resolution. Three of the four trial processes were aborted; the first ended with a hung jury.