Tezaur Bita loses challenge to public urination charge

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

Tezaur Bita lost his constitutional challenge to a public urination charge in the Court of Appeal on 13 March 2020. Ms Justice Donnelly delivered the judgment dismissing his appeal against the High Court’s refusal to prevent his prosecution.

The charge concerned an alleged act contrary to public decency, namely urinating in public, under section 5 of the Summary Jurisdiction (Ireland) Amendment Act 1871. It arose from an incident at Old Nangor Road, Dublin, on 27 August 2015. Bita also faced a separate charge under section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977, which the judgment said was not relevant to the appeal.

Bita argued that the 1871 offence was unconstitutionally vague. He pointed to a discrepancy in a garda’s accounts: a précis said he urinated in bushes, while an affidavit said he urinated on the footpath. The judge said resolving that discrepancy was a matter for the trial.

The court dismissed his appeal. The prosecution accepted that indecency had to be proved, and the judge said public urination alone was not being put forward as inherently indecent. She held that the section criminalised acts deemed objectively indecent by contemporary standards.

The court said Bita’s arguments about whether breastfeeding, spitting, removing a shirt, embracing or displaying risqué tattoos would be covered by the section were irrelevant to the assessment of his own circumstances.