Various Sex Offences
Cases
J.H. v Director of Public Prosecutions,
High Court, April 2, 2004
Judgment of Mr. Justice Murphy dated the 2nd day of April, 2004.
1. Outline of Case
The applicant in this case was tried and convicted of certain sexual offences committed against his daughter in 1999 and appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal on the 3rd December, 2001. That court allowed the appeal and directed a re-trial.
On the 18th February, 2002, within the three month period, leave was granted by McKechnie J. at a time when the applicant had served two years in custody out of the nine years to which he was sentenced.
The applicant was given leave for an injunction by way of application for judicial review restraining the respondent from prosecuting the applicant in proceedings entitled CC 113/98 The People of Ireland (D.P.P.) v. The Applicant.
2. Grounds upon which relief is sought
The applicant says that the delay between the dates of the alleged offences (1st September, 1985 to 21st September, 1987) and the date of return for trial of the applicant on the 2nd October, 1998, amounts to a failure to vindicate the applicant’s constitutional entitlement to fairness of procedures, a breach of his rights to constitutional and natural justice and to an expeditious hearing.
The applicant submitted that the Gardaí failed to investigate the matters with reasonable expedition after the initial complaint of the 4th May, 1990 and to carry out any step in the investigation whatsoever during the period between the taking of a statement from the complainant’s mother in December, 1990, up to the 27th February, 1998, when warrants for the arrest of the applicant were obtained by the Gardaí. It was alleged that such a delay itself is of such magnitude as to amount to be a breach of the above mentioned rights. The applicant had not been in a position to contact the children who are neighbours of the applicant, nor to remember their names, and has been greatly stressed by the making of the allegations. The trial on those offences at such a remote time from the date of the alleged offences amounts to an abuse of the process of the court.
3. Affidavit of the Applicant
The applicant referred to the indictment in relation to a total of seven counts, one of rape, one of unlawful carnal knowledge, one of incest and four of indecent assault, alleged to have been committed against his daughter, between the dates 1st September, 1985 to the 21st September, 1987. On the 27th February, 1998, eight warrants for his arrest were issued. He was arrested in England on foot of those warrants and consented to being extradited on the 6th August, 1998 and returned for trial on the 2nd October, 1998.
He said that he was not guilty of the offences and had maintained that position at all times.
He referred to the relationship between his daughter’s mother and its deterioration and his subsequent emigration to England, where he maintained contact with his children. He subsequently married in England.
In 1990, his daughter wrote asking him to come home for her confirmation and requested him to send her money. When he came home her mother told him that she knew what he had been doing and told him that he should never see the children again and that she had taken their daughter to hospital on the 4th May, 1990, and that Garda Rita Walsh had taken a statement from the daughter.
In December, 1990, a further short statement was taken from the daughter’s mother, regarding the daughter’s paternity. As appeared from the book of evidence (p. 64) the next statement taken from the daughter was on the 20th September, 1996, almost six years later.
On the 25th May, 1999, the applicant’s solicitor had written to the Chief State Solicitor seeking, inter alia, information as to the cause of the delay in prosecuting the matter. No reply was received until the 14th July, 1999, which did not address the issue of the delay.
The trial commenced on the 19th July, 1999, before the Central Criminal Court. During the course of the trial it emerged from the evidence of Garda Rita Walsh that she had forwarded her report to her superior officers and thereafter nothing had happened with the file between the end of 1990 and a phone call from the English Child Protection Agency in September, 1996. No explanation was given for the inaction on the file – it was stated that two superior officers were since deceased. When Garda Walsh was prompted to search through the archives, she found the original file with the statements and medical report. It was accepted by the prosecution that “nothing happened” with the file in the intervening six years.
The applicant averred that he was not advised of the possibility of applying to halt his trial on the ground of a breach of his constitutional rights and no application was made on his behalf.
The Court of Criminal Appeal, heard his appeal on the 3rd December, 2001, and were of the opinion that the trial judge’s decision to give a warning on corroboration due to the delay, left an element of uneasiness in the case and remitted it to the Central Criminal Court, where it was re-listed on the 20th December, 2001, and a date fixed for trial on the 12th May, 2003. The applicant was re-admitted to bail by the Court of Criminal Appeal.
It was submitted on the applicant’s behalf that he has been prejudiced by the delay itself in prosecuting the offence, as is stated in the grounds referred to above. He had served over two years in custody. He had been prejudiced by his time in custody, which led to marital difficulties. He and his wife became estranged and he had returned to live in this jurisdiction.
He maintained that there was gross delay on the part of the prosecution authorities in the conduct of the case from December, 1990 to September, 1996, during which time nothing happened. This was inexcusable and culpable prosecutorial delay. The delay was further compounded by the delay between his interview with the English police in April, 1997 and the issue of the warrants for his arrest in February, 1998. There were further delays between February, 1998 and his arrest in July, 1998.
4. Statement of Opposition
The respondent submitted that the facts upon which the applicant was basing his claim were known to him either before or at the time of his trial in July, 1999. He has not applied for judicial review within the appropriate time, nor had he sought an extension of time. The court should, ordinarily, decline to grant the relief sought. The delay was explained by reason of the dominion he exercised over the complainant prior to her making a complaint to her mother in May, 1990. The subsequent delay was not blameworthy. If such delay had occurred, it was regrettable, but not such as would violate any constitutional right or cause any prejudice in consequence of the lapse of time. The applicant had failed to discharge the onus of proof upon him to establish that there was a real risk that he would be subjected to a trial which was other than fair and in due course of law.
Garda Rita Walsh substantiated the averments of the applicant with regard to the alleged prosecutorial delay in her affidavit.
5. Replying Affidavit
The applicant, in his replying affidavit, rejected any suggestion that his application was out of time in that he had applied for the relief sought as soon as possible following the quashing of his conviction in the Court of Criminal Appeal and the direction of a re-trial. It was only then that the relevance of prosecutorial delay was explained to him and the issue was raised before the Court of Criminal Appeal.
Mr. Anthony Collins S.C. made submissions on behalf of the applicant in relation to the time for applying for judicial review. The applicant could not have brought prohibition proceedings while he was a convicted person and had to wait until his conviction had been set aside. He then applied within the time specified by the Rules of Court. The nature of prosecutorial delay due to unexplained Garda inactivity on the file had only been apparent during the course of his original trial. However, it was not until he had obtained further legal advice during the course of the appeal that its relevance was raised.
The statement of opposition was not filed until the 10th February, 2003, virtually a year after leave was granted after the respondent had sought extensions (which were objected to) for the purpose of considering the papers. There could be no prejudice to the respondent in any delay. The applicant relied on the judgment of McGuinness J. in D.P.P. v. Judge Hamill and Michael Dighnan, Unreported, 23rd July, 1999.
Counsel referred to The State (Healy) v. Donoghue [1976] I.R. 325, where the Supreme Court identified some of the rights guaranteed by Article 38 of the Constitution that no person be tried on any criminal charge save in due course of law and the right to reasonable expedition.
The Supreme Court have since confirmed this discrete right to a trial with due expedition in P.C. v. D.P.P. and P.O’C. v. D.P.P. [2000] 3 I.R. 87 at 93.
Mr. Collins distinguished delay referable to the complaint (in this case between September, 1987 and May, 1990) and prosecutorial delay (between 1990 and 1996).
D.P.P. v. Byrne [1994] 236 at 245, was relied on:
“. . . I am driven to the further conclusion that, of necessity, instances may occur in which a delay between the date of the alleged commission of an offence and the date of a proposed trial identified as unreasonable, would give rise to the necessity for a court to protect the constitutional right of the accused by preventing the trial, even where it could not be established either that the delay involved an oppressive pre-trial detention, or that it created a risk of probability that the accused’s capacity to defend himself would be impaired. This must lead, of course, to a conclusion that, on an application to prohibit a trial on the basis of unreasonable delay, or lapse of time, failure to establish actual or presumptive prejudice may not conclude the issues which have to be determined.”
In P.P. v. D.P.P. [2000] 1 IR 403 at 411, Geoghegan J. stated that if there was blameworthy delay on the part of either the guards or the D.P.P., “the court should not allow the case to proceed and additional actual prejudice need not be proved”. Where a constitutional right had been clearly infringed, the trial should not be permitted to proceed. Procedurally it would be correct to grant relief by way of judicial review in the form of an injunction against the D.P.P. from further proceeding with the charges.
In B.F. v. D.P.P. [2001] 1 IR 656, Geoghegan J., delivering the judgment of the court stated:
“I take the view that where there is culpable delay on the part of the State authorities, then having regard to all the circumstances of the case, the delay itself may entitle the accused to an order preventing the trial, irrespective of whether there is actual or presumptive prejudice.”
In relation to prejudice, it was submitted that not alone has the applicant been greatly stressed by the allegations but he has already spent two years in custody. The applicant submitted himself voluntarily to questioning in April, 1997. He consented to extradition on 6th April, 1998.
In his closing submissions, counsel referred to the case being of gross prosecutorial delay, which was not excused and was inexcusable. It was grossly negligent to mislay a file for six years, particularly in view of the seriousness of the allegations. The gross delay amounts, of itself, to a violation of the applicant’s right to an expeditious hearing.
6. Submissions on behalf of the respondent
Mr. McDonagh S.C., counsel on behalf of the Director, distinguished between the complainant’s delay from the 21st September, 1987 to on the 4th May, 1990, and the delay between December 1990 and September, 1996. Where one is dealing with post-complaint delay, as in this case, the court must first come to the conclusion that the delay is inordinate and inexcusable and that it must perform a balancing test such as propounded in Barker v. Wingo [1972] 407 U.S. 514, referred to by Finlay C.J. in D.P.P. v. Byrne [1994] 2 I.R. 236. It was submitted that Finlay C.J. was not suggesting that all that had to be established was an inordinate delay. He was emphasising that, having established such a delay, it was not necessary to establish prejudice to one’s defence or excessive pre-trial incarceration. He was pointing out other factors may come into play, such as anxiety post-charge. There must always be a balancing test save that, where one is concerned with prejudice to one’s defence, that balancing test may be pointing clearly in one direction.
He referred to the emphasis by Keane C.J. on the necessity for this balancing test in P.M. v. Judge Malone & Ors., (Unreported, Supreme Court, June 7th, 2002). There Keane C.J. stated that it did not follow that the impairment of the defendant to defend himself in a case such as this was a necessary precondition to the successful invocation by him of the discrete constitutional right to a speedy trial. He added that where there had been a significant and culpable delay to which the applicant had not contributed in any way, the result may be actual prejudice (the loss of otherwise available evidence) or presumptive prejudice (the difficulties necessarily inherent in giving evidence after a lengthy period) which may affect his ability to defend himself and hence fatally compromise the fairness of the trial. The court held that this may not be the only consequence for the accused following from significant and culpable delay to which the accused has not contributed. The loss of an accused’s liberty, the anxiety and concern of the accused resulting from the significant delay in his being brought to trial and the possibility that the defence will be impaired, are other interests of defendants which the right to a speedy trial is intended to protect.
P.M. v. Judge Malone & Ors. the Supreme Court, at pp. 24-25 of the unreported decision, made a distinction between the anxiety and concern of an accused after he had been charged and the position before he had been charged. If the accused’s right to a reasonable, expeditious trial is violated by culpable delay which is so significant as, objectively considered, to cause him anxiety and concern, it would follow that that would be a ground for prohibiting his further trial where the delay occurred after he had been charged.
It was submitted that the statement, at pp. 34 and 35 of P.M. v. Judge Malone & Ors. that, “it is now clear that delay of itself, even where neither actual nor presumptive prejudice to the accused was demonstrated, may be a ground for restraining the continuance of the trial” did not represent the law. He referred to in the context of Mills v. Queen (1986) 29 D.L.R. and O’Flynn v. Clifford & Ors. [1988] 1 I.R. 740 and D.P.P. v. Byrne [1994] 2 I.R. 243. Issues other than conventional prejudice needed to be considered in the balancing test.
Mr. McDonagh submitted that were the Supreme Court to intervene to prohibit or, more correctly, injunct, a criminal trial on the ground that there had been a breach of the right to reasonable expedition, absent any proof of prejudice as interpreted by the Supreme Court, an effective statute of limitations would be introduced into criminal proceedings, contrary to the repeated assertions of that court to the contrary (B. v. D.P.P. [1997] 3 I.R. 140 at 149 per Denham J. and P.O’C v. D.P.P. [2000] 3 I.R. 87 per Keane C.J. at 93 and Denham J. at 97.) He submitted that the ground of an injunction merely on showing the lapse of time before complaint, would corrode trust in the system of criminal procedure.
In addition, the applicant must prove that there had been excessive delay and that a fair trial was not possible. The applicant must prove his case on the balance of probabilities in judicial review proceedings. Counsel suggested that the dominion of the applicant over his daughter may have prevented her from making further complaints.
It was submitted that the applicant suffered no actual prejudice. To say he could not remember the names of the children who were his neighbours has to be assessed in the context of the uncontroverted evidence of the respondent that the applicant did not mix with his neighbours. There are no particulars given of stress. It would appear, from para. 12 of the applicant’s affidavit, that it was not until the 9th April, 1997, when he attended Sutton Police Station voluntarily, to answer complaints made by his daughter, that he was aware of the complaint.
Garda Walsh, in para. 13 of her affidavit, said that it was likely that there would have been a delay arising in any prosecution of the applicant in that, following his being challenged by his daughter’s mother in respect of the allegation of the complainant, it appears that he broke off contact with his family. It was not until 1994, when the complainant’s mother discovered a letter from the applicant to her son, that his address became known to her. However, it would appear from the affidavits of the applicant’s sisters, that none of them were approached by the Gardaí with regard to his address.
The applicable law in relation to the balancing test required to be conducted following a finding of post-complaint delay in criminal prosecutions was considered in a number of cases. Kelly J. enumerated and reviewed these principles in McKenna v. Presiding Judge of the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court and D.P.P. (Unreported, January 14th, 2000) and affirmed by the Supreme Court. These ten principles include:
1. the delay in the case;
2. the reason or reasons for the delay;
3. the accused’s actions in relation to the events in issue;
4. the accused’s assertion of his constitutional rights;
5. the actual prejudice to the accused;
6. the pre-trial incarceration of the accused;
7. the length of time of pre-trial anxiety and concern of the accused;
8. the limitations or impairments of defence;
9. the circumstances which may render the case into a special category, and
10. the community’s right to have the offences prosecuted.
Having applied the principles enumerated by Denham J. in B. v. D.P.P. [1997] 3 I.R. 140 at 195, Kelly J. concluded that whilst there had been, very regrettably, inordinate and inexcusable delay in the prosecution of the charges in that case, the applicant had not demonstrated that such delay had given rise to a real risk of an unfair trial, nor had they given rise to excessive anxiety nor was pre-trial incarceration involved.
Even if the court were to find that there had been inordinate and/or inexcusable delay, the applicant has not demonstrated that such delay has given rise to a real risk of an unfair trial. No actual prejudice had been shown and the circumstances were not such as to give rise to an inference that the risk of an unfair trial had been established as a reality. The applicant failed to raise other aspects of prejudice as would outweigh the public interest in ensuring that the trial proceeds.
7. Decision
The applicant is entitled to a presumption of innocence. His conviction was quashed by the Court of Criminal Appeal and a re-trial was ordered which was set down and was adjourned pending the outcome of these judicial review proceedings.
The alleged incidents had occurred between September, 1985 and September, 1987. The initial complaint was made on the 4th May, 1990. Sometime that year, according to para. 9 of the applicant’s grounding affidavit, his daughter wrote to him to come home for her Confirmation. When he arrived back and called to the house he was approached by her mother and told that she knew what he was doing and that he would never see the children again. There is no indication here of a complaint, much less of a charge in relation to a complaint.
The applicant says (para. 12 of his affidavit) that on the 9th April, 1997, he voluntarily attended at Sutton Police Station to answer questions regarding the complaints made by his daughter. It was not until a further fifteen months later when he was arrested, that is July, 1998, and his trial commenced on the 19th July, 1999.
It would seem to follow, assuming as I must, the innocence of the applicant which is clearly averred to in para. 6 of his grounding affidavit, that the concern and anxiety originated on the 9th April, 1997.
With this in mind, the court must distinguish between three periods of delay:
That between the two years range in which it was alleged the offences took place to the 4th May, 1990; between the 4th May, 1990 to the 9th April, 1997, during which period from the 14th June, 1990 to the 20th September, 1996, no action was taken by the Gardaí between the taking of statements from the complainant on those two dates to the 19th July, 1999, when the trial commenced.
The applicant said that the delay of six and a half years between the two statements constituted inexcusable and inordinate delay on behalf of the prosecution. He relies on the submissions culminating in P.M. v. Judge Malone & Ors., (Unreported, Supreme Court, June 7th 2002) at p. 38 where Keane C.J., having considered a number of cases, stated that “It is now clear that delay of itself, even where neither actual nor presumptive prejudice to the accused is demonstrated, may be a ground for restraining the continuance of the trial.
The Chief Justice was satisfied that in determining whether the concern and anxiety caused to an accused person was such as to justify the prohibition of his trial on the ground that his constitutional right to a reasonably expeditious trial has been violated, the court, depending entirely on the circumstances of the particular case, may be entitled to take into account not merely delay subsequent to his being charged and brought to trial but also delay prior to the formal charge.
I have no doubt that if there were evidence of an inordinate, even if excusable, delay between charge and prosecution, that an applicant would be entitled to an injunction. While it is clear from the judgment in P.M., the court is entitled to take into account delay before charge it seems to me that such delay cannot commence before an applicant was aware of the complaint being made. The length of delay between the last date of the alleged offences and the trial was almost twelve years which, in itself, though lengthy, would not necessarily lead to injunctive relief prohibiting the trial. The applicant had left the jurisdiction and, though his sisters knew his address and were not approached by the Gardaí, his wife did not know his address until 1994. The Court can only take into account delay from the 9th April, 1997 when the applicant attended Sutton Police Station and became aware of his daughter’s complaint to the Gardaí even if there had been some reference to him being told by the injured party’s mother that the injured party made a statement Garda Rita Walsh on 4th May, 1990.
However, the court must look not to the date of the original trial but to the date of the pending re-trial which would now probably take place more than five years after the original trial. The court must also take into account the prejudice suffered by the applicant since April, 1997, which may well be over eight years after the complaints of the police were made known to him. The circumstances of his acquittal and the order for re-trial made by the Court of Criminal Appeal does relate to the prosecutorial delay in that the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeal that the unease felt by that court related to the inexcusable delay on the part of the prosecuting authorities. I am satisfied that the applicant could not initiate judicial review proceedings while he was convicted by the Central Criminal Court. The time to make that argument was before or at his trial. I am satisfied that his solicitor did request the Chief State Solicitor for reasons for the delay by letter dated the 25th May, 1999. No reply was received until the 14th July, 1999. That reply did not give reasons for the delay.
The applicant is now entitled to apply for judicial review which he has done promptly from the date of the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeal. This court must, accordingly, look at the matter from this time perspective and without having regard to the previous conviction.
It seems extraordinary, in a serious case of this nature, that records were mislaid and that there was no system to track and date those records. In this regard I should repeat what the Court of Criminal Appeal stated with regard to the diligent efforts made by Garda Rita Walsh to locate the file.
The net issue relates to whether an applicant need show any prejudice with regard to prosecutorial delay. It seems to me that the court has to balance the ten factors referred to by Kelly J. in McKenna v. Presiding Judge of Dublin Circuit Criminal Court and the D.P.P., Unreported, January 14th, 2000, and affirmed by the Supreme Court in an ex tempore judgment (see also Denham J. in B. v. D.P.P. [1997] 3 I.R. 140 at 195).
While I am not very convinced of the reasons put forward by the applicant to substantiate actual prejudice; it was undoubtedly the case that, on the important assumption of innocence, that the applicant has suffered not alone anxiety but has already served a prison sentence.
It seems to me, in these circumstances, that the applicant is entitled to the relief sought. Accordingly, the court will grant an injunction by way of an application for judicial review restraining the respondent from prosecuting the applicant in proceedings entitled Bill No. CC 113/98, The People of Ireland (at the suit of the Director of Public Prosecutions) v. JH.
R v H
Circuit Cases.
15 March 1913
[1913] 47 I.L.T.R 154
Cherry L.J.
Belfast, March 15, 1913
Indictment. The accused was charged under the Punishment of Incest Act, 1908, with an offence against his daughter. Other evidence having been given against the accused, the Crown then proposed to examine the accused’s wife in support of the charge, a copy of her intended evidence having previously been duly served on the accused. The accused was not defended.
Cherry, L.J.
[On what authority does the Crown base that application?]
G. H. Smith (with him Gordon, K.C.).—The Punishment of Incest Act, 1908, s. 4 (4), introduced into that Act the provisions of the Criminal Evidence Act, 1898, s. 4, which provides that the husband or wife of a person charged with an offence under any enactment mentioned in the schedule may be called as a witness either for the prosecution or defence, and without the consent of the person charged.
Cherry, L.J.—In my opinion this evidence cannot be received or the wife admitted as a witness. The Criminal Evidence Act, 1898, is specifically not to extend to Ireland (s. 7), and the only effect which the section quoted from the Incest Act can have is to enlarge the operation of the former Act in England and Scotland where alone it is applicable.
Doolan v Director of Public Prosecutions
[1993] ILRM 387, O’Hanlon J
The applicant, Maurice Doolan, was indicted before His Honour Judge Michael Moriarty in the Dublin Circuit Court on 11 June 1991, on two charges, the first being a charge of indecent assault on a named female on 24 June 1990, ‘contrary to common law as provided for in s. 10 Criminal Law (Rape) Act 1981. Contrary to form of the statute in such case made and provided’.
The second count in the indictment charged him with assault against the said person on the said date ‘contrary to common law and contrary to form of the statute in such case made and provided’.
Before being arraigned, his counsel, Mr Mackey SC, challenged the validity of the indictment, contending that there was no offence known to the law as that of ‘indecent assault’ and that accordingly the first count should be struck out of the indictment. As there was a good deal of pressure on the criminal list that day, with large numbers of jurors called for service, it was not opportune to embark on a lengthy argument at that stage. On the suggestion of counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions the learned trial judge indicated that the applicant would initially be arraigned only on the charge referred to in count No. 2 (which referred to the charge of common assault), without prejudice to the argument to be advanced at a later stage seeking to quash count No. 1.
Mr Mackey SC then indicated that his client proposed to plead guilty to the charge in count No. 2; on the trial judge enquiring from counsel for the State whether that was acceptable to the Director of Public Prosecutions he was informed that it was not, but the arraignment on that charge went ahead and the applicant pleaded guilty.
Thereafter a legal argument took place concerning the validity of count No. 1 and on the following day, 12 June 1991, Judge Moriarty gave his decision, ruling against the submission put forward on behalf of the applicant.
Application was then made on behalf of the applicant to the High Court for the purpose of seeking leave to apply for judicial review of the decision of the learned Circuit Court judge, and in particular to seek an order of prohibition to prevent any continuance of the criminal proceedings against the applicant in relation to the charge referred to in count No. 1 of the said indictment.
On 12 June 1991, an order was made by Morris J in the High Court giving leave to apply for this relief on the ground relied on by the applicant, that the said count No. 1 in the indictment disclosed no offence known to the law either under the common law or statute. By a further order of the High Court (Lardner J) made on 29 July 1991, leave was granted to the applicant to amend the grounds on which relief was sought by the addition thereto of the further plea that, ‘In the alternative, count 1 of the indictment herein charges the simple offence of assault, albeit of a higher category to that charged in count 2 and the court having accepted a plea to the said count 2 the Director of Public Prosecutions is precluded from proceeding pursuant to the said count 1 of the indictment’.
In support of the contention that the offence of ‘indecent assault’ was unknown to the law — either common law or statute law — Mr Mackey SC relied on the fact that no such offence was referred to under that particular title in earlier texts from which the content of the common law may be gleaned, and this appears to be generally correct. Insofar as the matter has since been dealt with by statute law he pointed out that the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, s. 52, does not spell out that it shall be a felony or a misdemeanour to commit an indecent assault against a female, nor purport to create a new criminal offence, but merely specifies the penalty that may be imposed on any person ‘convicted of any indecent assault upon any female’.
Similar provisions are to be found in the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1935, s. 6, and in the Criminal Law (Rape) Act 1981, s. 10, which provided as follows:
10.—
(1) If a person is convicted on indictment of any indecent assault upon a female he shall be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years.
S. 6 of the Act of 1935 was thereby repealed.
S. 10 of the Act of 1981 has in turn, been repealed by the Criminal Law (Rape) (Amendment) Act 1990, which contained a new provision in s. 2 dealing with the offence of indecent assault in the following terms:
2.—
(1) The offence of indecent assault upon any male person and the offence of indecent assault upon any female person shall be known as sexual assault.
(2) A person guilty of sexual assault shall be liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years.
(3) Sexual assault shall be a felony.
When the matter came to be dealt with in the English Sexual Offences Act 1956, it was specifically provided by s. 14 of the Act that an indecent assault upon a female (of any age) is a misdemeanour, with a similar provision in s. 15 in relation to indecent assault upon a male, and separate penalties are provided for each offence.
For the applicant it is submitted that in the absence of evidence to be derived from the history of criminal law here and in England that a specific offence of indecent assault was known to the common law, and in the absence of any express provision in the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, or any subsequent legislation applicable in this jurisdiction and dealing with the topic of sexual offences (with the possible exception of the Act of 1990 referred to above), creating a statutory offence of indecent assault, then it must be considered that the offence was unknown to the law at the time when the offences charged against the applicant are alleged to have been committed. (The Act of 1990 came into force one month after 18 December 1990).
The offences of assault and battery certainly formed part of the common law from earliest times. In Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England , 4th book, Ch. 15, dealing with offences against the person, the learned author observes as follows:
The inferior offences, or misdemeanours, that fall under this head, are assaults, batteries, wounding, false imprisonment, and kidnapping.
With regard to the nature of the three first of these offences in general, … taken in a public light as a breach of the king’s peace, an affront to his government and a damage done to his subjects, they are also indictable and punishable with fines and imprisonment; or with other ignominious corporal penalties, where they are committed with any very atrocious design.
Assault, in the strict sense, merely involved the threat to inflict unlawful force, however slight, on another person, making some movement which caused the other person to believe that such unlawful physical contact was imminent. A battery consists in the actual application of unlawful force, but the word ‘assault’ has been quite commonly used to include what should, more strictly, be called a ‘battery’.
As assaults, in the wider meaning of the term, can range from the almost imperceptible use of physical force, such as laying one’s hand on the arm of another in a hostile manner, to assault causing grievous bodily harm, it was thought right to regulate by statute the penalties that could be imposed for different circumstances of assault, so that they could be seen to be proportionate to the seriousness of the offence.
It appears that what was involved, save in cases where new felonies or misdemeanours were created by statute, was the old common law misdemeanour of assault, (including in appropriate circumstances the features both of assault and battery, or of battery alone), with a statutory regulation of the penalties which could be imposed having regard to the nature of the assault which had taken place.
For this reason I find no fault with the course taken by the draftsmen of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, or of subsequent legislation dealing with the same topic, who did not consider it necessary in all cases to create new offences by statute in express terms, but merely spelt out the range of penalties applicable having regard to the circumstances surrounding the application of unlawful force by one person to another.
The Act of 1861 creates various statutory felonies and misdemeanours in express terms, for example, obstructing or assaulting a clergyman in discharge of his duties (s. 36), assault with intent to commit felony on peace officers (s. 38 — misdemeanour) and so forth. In the case of what is known as ‘common assault’, s. 42 of the Act merely provides for the mode of trial and the penalties which may be imposed. Similarly, in s. 43, dealing with aggravated assaults on females and boys under 14 years, it was provided that the justices, if in their opinion the assault or battery was of such an aggravated nature that it could not be sufficiently punished under the penalties provided by s. 42, could still deal with the matter summarily, but could impose more severe penalties than could be imposed under s. 42.
Once again, the penalty only was dealt with in s. 52, referring to indecent assault upon any female, and no new offence was expressly created by the terms of the section, which read as follows:
52. Whosoever shall be convicted of any indecent assault upon any female, or of any attempt to have carnal knowledge of any girl under twelve years of age, shall be liable at the discretion of the court, to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.
As indecent assault involves the use of unlawful force, threatened or perpetrated against another person, it was an offence at common law, and in my opinion, it was permissible for parliament to prescribe a special range of penalties for assault, or assault and battery, of this particular kind without having to spell out the creation of a new statutory felony or misdemeanour in the process. Blackstone refers to a statute of 9 Edward II, ch. 3, where special provision is made for the punishment of anyone laying violent hands on a clerk in holy orders without declaring that it shall be an offence to do so.
I therefore conclude, as did the learned Circuit Court judge, that this challenge to the validity of the indictment cannot succeed. I derive support in reaching this conclusion from the decision of the present Chief Justice, then President of the High Court, in the case of State (Foley) v Carroll [1980] IR 150; the decision of the Supreme Court in State (McCarthy) v Governor of Mountjoy Prison, 1967 No. 106, 20 October 1967, referred to in Foley’s case, and the judgment of Ó Dálaigh CJ, in State (O.) v O’Brien [1971] IR 42, at pp. 47, 50–51. The judgment in the last-mentioned case would suggest that the offence of indecent assault referred to in the Act of 1861 and subsequent statutes should be regarded as a statutory offence rather than a common law offence, notwithstanding the absence of a formal declaration in the statutes that it is to be regarded as a felony or a misdemeanour.
There remains for consideration the contention of the applicant that having been arraigned on count 2 of the indictment and having pleaded guilty to the charge of common assault, the State is precluded from proceeding further against him on count 1 — the charge of indecent assault. It appears to me that it was unnecessary to include a separate count of common assault, as it was held in R. v Bostock (1893) 17 Cox’s CC 700 that on a count for indecent assault, the prisoner may be convicted of common assault.
However, subject to the prohibition in the Interpretation Act 1937, s. 14, directed against punishing an offender twice-over for the same offence, it appears to me that it is permissible to include alternative charges of greater and lesser seriousness in the same indictment, leaving it to the jury to determine whether the accused person should be convicted of one or other, but not of both, if the charges arise out of the same episode and the same set of facts.
The applicant has indicated that he is prepared to plead guilty to the charge on count 2 but he has not as yet been convicted of the said offence, as the learned Circuit Court judge took the course of putting the entire matter back for further consideration having regard to the submissions made as to the validity of the charge referred to in count 1. The official record of his decision as certified by the county registrar on 17 January 1992 is merely to the effect: ‘Case has not yet been disposed of — due in Circuit (Criminal) Court for mention on 31 January 1992’. The applicant is entitled to withdraw his plea of guilty at any time before sentence, by leave of the court (R. v Plummer [1902] 2 KB 339).
I am of the opinion that it is open to the learned Circuit Court judge to defer proceeding to conviction of the applicant on the charge in count No. 2 until count No. 1 has also been dealt with. Should the applicant be found guilty of the more serious charge referred to in the count No. 1 and should it also transpire that the two charges are based on the same facts and do not refer to two separate and distinct assaults, then the proper course in the event of a conviction on count 1 would be to strike out the charge at count 2, while proceeding to impose sentence in relation to the charge of indecent assault.
In reaching this decision I have had regard to the judgment of the Supreme Court, delivered by Ó Dálaigh CJ in the case of Attorney General (Ó Maonaigh) v Fitzgerald [1964] IR 458.
Alternatively, it appears to me that it would be open to the prosecution, notwithstanding the plea of guilty to the charge in count 2, to ask the trial judge to strike out this charge at the present stage, and to allow the trial to proceed only in relation to the charge at count 1, having regard to the fact that it would be open to a jury to acquit on the charge referred to at count 1 but to bring in a verdict of ‘guilty of common assault’ without requiring a separate count to enable them to do so.
S v. Director of Public Prosecution
Supreme Court, December 19, 2000
S. v. D.P.P. [2000] IESC 30 (19th December, 2000)
This is an appeal by S., the applicant/appellant, against an order of the High Court
(Geoghegan J.,) of the 18th February 1999 refusing the application of the applicant/appellant for an order of prohibition and other reliefs directed towards prohibiting his trial in the District Court on a number of counts of indecent assault.
Factual Background
1. The appellant was at all material times a consultant surgeon residing in a provincial town. For many years he held a post in a local hospital and in addition he carried on a private practice in consulting rooms in the town. On the 23rd December 1996 a number of summonses were issued against him alleging offences of indecent assault contrary to Section [*2] 62 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 relating to eleven male youths who had been his patients. The majority of the charges relate to offences which are alleged to have occurred between 1971 and 1979; one charge, however, goes back to 1962 or 1963, while the final offence is alleged to have taken place in 1982. The majority of the youths concerned were in their later teenage years at the time of the alleged offences; one was 19 years of age, one was 18, four were 17, one 16 and two 15 . One of the complainants was 14 at the time of the alleged offence; the youngest complainant was between 9 and 11 years of age at the time of the alleged offence.
2. The appellant at all times and in particular during interviews with members of the Garda Siochana denied all the allegations made against him and he pleaded not guilty to the offences in the District Court.
3. An inquiry was carried out by the judge of the District Court as to whether the offences alleged against the appellant were appropriate for summary disposal. Having heard submissions from counsel for the appellant and counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions, together with an outline of the evidence which the Director of Public Prosecutions intended to adduce in the case, the learned judge of the District Court held that the allegations were fit to be tried summarily and accepted jurisdiction in the matter. At a subsequent hearing counsel for the appellant applied to the judge of the District Court to dismiss the summary criminal proceedings on the ground that the delay between the approximate dates when the offences were said to have occurred and the date upon which the proceedings were instituted was in itself an unconscionable period of delay and that such delay had seriously prejudiced the appellant in his ability to defend himself against the allegations. The judge of the District Court, who is named as the second named respondent in [*3] the present proceedings but who has taken no part in them, refused to dismiss the summary criminal proceedings.
4. On 17th July 1997 the appellant issued proceedings for judicial review seeking the following reliefs:
A declaration that the delay in instituting the criminal proceedings the subject matter of the application for relief herein against S. constitutes an abuse of process of the criminal jurisdiction of the District Court.
A declaration that the delay in instituting the criminal proceedings the subject matter of the application for relief herein against S. has prejudiced him in his ability to properly defend himself in those proceedings.
3. An order prohibiting the presiding District Judge sitting in the District Court at Drogheda in the County of Louth from further proceeding with the summary criminal trial of S. on the offences the subject matter of the application for relief herein.
4. An order in the nature of an injunction restraining the Director of Public Prosecutions from further proceeding with the summary criminal prosecution of S. on the criminal offences the subject matter of the relief herein.
5. An order staying the summary criminal proceedings the subject matter of the application for relief herein, pursuant to Order 84, Rule 20(7)(a) and (b) of the Rules of the Superior Courts as amended, pending the determination of this application.
6. An order directing that the application for relief herein be heard pursuant to the provisions of Section 45 of the Courts (Supplemental Provisions) Act 1961 as amended, in camera. 7. An order providing for all necessary and/or incidental directions in relation to this application for relief.
5. The principal ground on which the appellant sought these reliefs was the lengthy delay between the alleged commission of the offences and any possible trial of the appellant. He claimed that the institution of the criminal proceedings violated his constitutional right to be tried on criminal charges in due course of law pursuant to Article 38.1 of the Constitution and also constituted a breach of Article 6 of the European Convention for the Protection of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms 1950. He claimed that he could not reasonably recollect either the material circumstances surrounding the alleged offences or the identity of any material witnesses who might be relevant to the allegations made against him.
6. The appellant also claimed that he did not exercise a position of dominance and/or exert control over any of the complainants in the criminal proceedings to the extent that they were prevented from making a prompt report of any allegation concerning him.
7. Leave to apply for judicial review was granted by order of Laffoy J. in the High Court on the 21st July 1997.
8. A Statement of Opposition was filed by the first named respondent on the 26th November 1997. This was supported by the affidavit of Detective Sergeant Patrick O’Donnell who was a member of the Garda Siochana who had been involved in the prosecution of the appellant in relation to the charges of indecent assault. In his affidavit Detective Sergeant O’Donnell sets out that the first complaint against the appellant was made in a statement to Sergeant Joseph Grennan on the 1st March 1994. The complainant alleged that he had been indecently assaulted a number of times in the course of a medical examination when he was about 14 or 15 years of age in or around 1975 to 1976. A second complaint of a similar nature was made by another complainant on the 16th June 1994.
[*5] These complaints were investigated by Superintendent Patrick J. O’Boyle and a file was submitted to the first named respondent, the Director of Public Prosecutions, for directions. In or about the month of June 1995 the first named respondent directed that there be no prosecution in respect of these complaints and this was notified to the appellant personally by Superintendent O’Boyle on the 7th July 1995.
9. Meanwhile further complaints against the appellant came to light. Between 11th June 1995 and the 7th December 1995 nine separate complaints alleging episodes of indecent assault by the appellant against teenage youths were made. In each case it was alleged that the assault had taken place in the course of a medical examination, in some cases at the local hospital and in other cases at the appellant’s consulting rooms.
10. On the directions of the first named respondent, copies of the statements of all the complainants together with such relevant hospital medical records as were available were given to Mr Harold J. Browne, consultant surgeon, on the 7th November 1996 for his opinion as to the propriety or otherwise of the conduct alleged against the appellant in each case having regard to the relevant circumstances. Mr Browne furnished his opinion in respect of the complaints by reports dated November and December 1996. These reports are exhibited with the affidavit of Detective Sergeant O’Donnell. On 16th December 1996 the first named respondent directed that proceedings in respect of all eleven complainants should be instituted. On 23rd December 1996 the relevant summonses were issued and on the same day were served personally on the appellant in the presence of his solicitor.
11. Between November 1994 and April 1996 the appellant was interviewed by the Gardai on a number of occasions. Notes were made of interviews with him and he also made statements. All of these are exhibited with the affidavit of Detective Sergeant O’Donnell. At all stages the appellant denied the allegations being made against him. In addition to this [*6] documentation Detective Sergeant O’Donnell also exhibits the medical records which had been obtained by the Gardai from the local hospital relating to the various complainants.
12. In addition to the affidavit of Detective Sergeant O’Donnell, affidavits were sworn by each of the complainants, in each case exhibiting a statement of that complainant’s allegations against the appellant, together with in each case a report of Alex Carroll, Psychologist. Mr Carroll had interviewed each complainant individually. He set out in these reports the details of each allegation, the alleged effects of the abuse on the life of the particular complainant and the reasons for the complainant’s delay in making any complaint. In each case Mr Carroll accepted that the position of power and authority of S. along with the embarrassment and shame experienced by the complainant and the known dynamics of sexual abuse adequately explained the failure to make a complaint at the time or in the intervening years.
The High Court Proceedings
13. At the trial of the judicial review proceedings before Geoghegan J. Mr Carroll was not cross examined on his affidavits; nor was any expert evidence called by the appellant to challenge or criticise the evidence of Mr Carroll.
14. In his judgment the learned High Court judge referred to the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court as contained in D v DPP [1997] 3 IR 140 and C v DPP, unreported judgments delivered the 28th day of May 1988.” He went on to say:
“The broad principles of law to be applied are fully described in the respective judgments of Denham J. in both of those cases. It is clear that dominance of an older person, particularly if that person has a special status, such as a parent, teacher, priest etc. can provide a perfectly reasonable excuse for delay in making a [*7] complaint of sexual abuse to the authorities. Since that reason emanates from the position of the accused himself, the delay is regarded as delay caused by him and therefore not a matter of legitimate complaint by him. But as Denham J. makes clear continuing dominance is not the only factor which may legitimately inhibit an early complaint. All factors must be taken into account, including ‘the relationship of the parties, the place of alleged abuse and the nature of the abuse’”
15. In regard to the allegations made by the complainants in the instant case Geoghegan J. found the evidence of Mr Carroll to be credible. At page 14 of the judgment he said:
“It is clear that in regard to each of the charges in this case, Mr Carroll, the psychologist, considered that if the complaints are true, there were psychological factors inhibiting early reporting. I find Mr Carroll’s expert evidence to be credible. A consultant surgeon, in a hospital is, at the best of times, a formidable and one could almost say, intimidating figure. Many of the alleged victims who claim that they did not know or at least did not know for certain that the handling of their genitals, in some instances allegedly to the point of masturbation, was not part of normal medical procedure. Some of them came from homes were sexual matters could not be discussed or where allegations of this kind against a distinguished surgeon or other person of status or authority would not be believed and in many instances there were alleged feelings of guilt at the taking of admitted pleasure.”
16. The learned High Court judge referred at some length to the judgment of Lynch J. in this court in the case of C v DPP and concluded that the circumstances in the instant case [*8] were similar in nature to those in the C. case. He concluded by refusing the application for judicial review.
The Notice of Appeal
17. The appellant has appealed to this court by notice of appeal dated the 19th April 1999. The grounds of his appeal are set out as follows:
1. The learned trial judge erred in law, or in the alternative erred in the mixed question of law and fact, in holding that the appellant/applicant had failed to discharge the onus of proof that the delay in relation to the criminal charges herein was excessive.
2. The learned trial judge misdirected himself in law and/or fact in failing to hold that the criminal charges should not proceed by reason of unconscionable delay and lapse of time since the alleged date of commission thereof.
3. The learned trial judge erred in law, or in the alternative erred in the mixed question of law and fact, in holding that the appellant/applicant had failed to discharge the onus of proof that the delay in relation to the criminal charges herein had prejudiced the appellant/applicant.
4. The learned trial judge erred in law, or in the alternative erred in the mixed question of law and fact in adopting the presumption of facts alleged as being true in explaining or excusing the delay complained of, against the presumption of innocence.
5. The learned trial judge erred in law, or in the alternative erred in the mixed question of law and fact in determining that a position of dominance did exist and/or continued to exist at any material time. [*9]
6. The learned trial judge erred in law, or in the alternative erred in the mixed question of law and fact in holding that there was no new question of law to be determined in these proceedings, having regard to the fact that the delay herein refers to alleged indictable offences being treated summarily.
7. Such further or other grounds of appeal as the appellant/applicant may with leave of this honourable court seek to advance at the hearing of this appeal.
Submissions of Counsel
18. Senior Counsel for the appellant, Mr McMenamin, submitted that this case should be differentiated from earlier cases of alleged child sexual abuse where prohibition had been sought on grounds of delay.
19. Firstly, this was not a trial on indictment before a jury, but a summary proceeding in the District Court. The learned District Court judge, having considered the material before him, was of the opinion that the allegations made were summary in nature and were fit to be tried summarily. He accepted jurisdiction in the matter. No suggestion had been made by any party that the District Court judge had acted improperly in accepting jurisdiction. Questions of delay should therefore be considered within the normal parameters of District Court proceedings. This included both the question of statutory time limits and the question of unconscionable delay in the context of summary proceedings.
20. In this case complaints had been made to the Gardai between one and two and a half years prior to the application for the summonses on the 23rd December 1996. Mr McMenamim submitted that the normal time limit of six months between the time when the cause of the complaint arose and the issuing of the summonses applied in accordance with Section 10(4) of the Petty Sessions (Ireland) Act 1851 (“the 1851 Act”). He acknowledged [*10] that Section 7 of the Criminal Justice Act 1951 (“the 1951 Act”) provided that the six month limit did not apply to a complaint in respect of “an indictable offence” but he submitted that the section did not deal with indictable offences tried summarily and did not apply to them. He relied on the case of DPP v Logan [1994] 3 IR 254 where it was held by this court that a prosecution in the District Court for an assault contrary to common law under Section 42 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and Section 11 of the Criminal Justice Act 1951 is not a complaint in respect of an indictable offence and therefore must be initiated within six months from the date of the alleged offence as required by Section 10 sub-section 4 of the Petty Sessions (Ireland) Act 1851. In his judgment Blayney J. (with whom Finlay C.J. and Egan J. had agreed) had held that Section 7 of the 1951 Act did not apply to the situation in that case.
21. Counsel for the appellant submitted that even if the 1851 Act limit did not apply, a delay of between eighteen and thirty seven years which had now elapsed from the commission of the alleged offences and any possible trial was unconsionable in the context of a summary trial. Summary proceedings implied the completion of a trial within a short time span. At the very least the parameters of delay established in ordinary civil proceedings should apply and he referred to the cases of O’Domhnaill v Merrick [1984] IR 151 and Toal v Duignan & Ors [1991] ILRM 135 .
22. In the alternative, Mr McMenamim submitted that in the context of the jurisprudence of this court concerning delay in cases of alleged child sexual abuse the instant case could be distinguished from earlier cases on a number of grounds. The victims were, with perhaps one exception, not young children but teenagers verging on young manhood, who would have been well able to complain of the alleged incidents at the time. The appellant was not a parent, a teacher or a neighbour, or indeed anyone having a close or continuing relationship [*11] with the complainants. He was a consultant surgeon who had only a brief and fleeting contact with the complainants. There was no question of continuous abuse over a period of years as there had been in earlier cases. There was no evidence of domination as described by Denham J. in B v DPP , or even at a lesser level as in P.C. v DPP . The time lapse itself was exceptionally long. Had the alleged offences been tried at an early date the appellant might well have been able to produce alibi evidence or other rebuttal evidence, particularly since many of the incidents were said to have taken place in a hospital, where nurses and other persons would have been present. In addition there would have been fuller medical records, especially from the appellant’s consulting rooms. The appellant’s own memory of the complainants as patients would have been fresh.
23. Senior counsel for the respondent Mr Gaffney, submitted that the appellant had been charged with indictable offences and that the question of delay should be considered in the light of the established jurisprudence concerning cases of child sexual abuse as set out in previous judgments of this court. This situation was not altered by the fact that the appellant was to be tried in a summary manner in the District Court. Section 7 of the Criminal Justice Act 1951 made it quite clear that the six month limit under the 1851 Act did not apply to indictable offences.
24. As far as the age of the complainants was concerned, he submitted that they were still minors at the time of the alleged offences. A Consultant Surgeon was a figure of very considerable authority, particularly in the surroundings of his own hospital or his own consulting rooms. These youths were confused about what was happening, they were ill and receiving treatment, they were vulnerable and afraid that they would not be believed if they complained. As time went by they were naturally inhibited about making complaints of this nature against a figure of authority in the community. [*12]
25. Mr Gaffney drew attention to the hospital records which were exhibited in the proceedings and submitted that they showed that many of the complainants were in fact patients at the hospital at the relevant time.
26. Mr Gaffney submitted that the court should not at this point take the presumption of innocence into account. At the criminal trial the prosecution would have to prove to the standard beyond reasonable doubt that the applicant was guilty as charged. The present proceedings were civil, not criminal, and the court should consider on the balance of probabilities whether the applicant had committed these offences. If it was probable on the evidence now before the court that he had, then his criminal trial should not be prohibited. Mr Gaffney stressed that the applicant had not himself in his affidavit directly asserted his innocence or established any detailed defence.
27. Mr Gaffney also submitted that the concept of dominion as set out in such cases as B v DPP and C v DPP should not be interpreted narrowly. He also argued that this case was not just a matter of assertion by the complainants and denial by the applicant; there was the evidence of the hospital records, the possibility that the applicant might yet have appointment diaries from his private practice.
28. In reply Mr McMenamim submitted that the appellant was entitled to a fair and expeditious trial in due course of law; this included the application of the principle of the presumption of innocence at all stages. The right to a fair trial, which included the right to an expeditious trial, was an entrenched constitutional right. This was the paramount matter of consideration before the court. [*13]
The Law and Conclusions
29. The first matter which falls to be considered is whether this case is to be treated differently from previous similar cases because the applicant is to be tried summarily in the District Court. Does the time limit of six months prescribed under Section 10 of the Petty Sessions (Ireland) Act 1851 apply here? Secondly, even if the 1851 Act time limit does not apply, should the court take a different and stricter approach to delay in the context of a summary trial in the District Court as opposed to a trial on indictment?
30. Section 10 sub-section 4 of the Petty Sessions (Ireland) Act 1851 provides inter alia a six month time limit within which a complaint must be made in cases of summary jurisdiction. Section 77 of the Courts of Justice Act 1924 provides:-
“The District Court shall have and exercise all powers, jurisdictions, and authorities
which immediately before the 6th day of December 1922 were vested by statute or
otherwise injustices or a justice of the peace sitting at petty sessions….”
Section 77 (B) of the Act of 1924 conferred on the District Court jurisdiction to try summarily certain indictable offences in particular circumstances.
31. The question of whether the six month time limit of the Act of 1851 applied to the summary trial of the indictable offences specified in Section 77 (B) of the Courts of Justice Act 1924 was considered by the former Supreme Court in The Attorney General v Conlon [1937] IR 762 and it was held that the time limit did apply to such prosecutions.
32. However the Oireachtas subsequently enacted the Criminal Justice Act 1951 , Section 7 of which provides:- [*14]
“Paragraph 4 (which prescribes time limits for the making of complaints in cases of
summary jurisdiction) of Section 10 of the Petty Sessions (Ireland) Act 1851 shall
not apply to a complaint in respect of an indictable offence.”
33. Section 2(2) of that Act provides that the District Court may try summarily a person charged with a scheduled offence in particular circumstances. A scheduled offence is defined to include offences specified in the first schedule to the Act. These include the offence of indecent assault with which the applicant in the instant case is charged.
34. Counsel for the applicant has referred the court to the case of DPP v Logan [1994] 3 IR 254 in support of his contention that Section 7 of the 1951 Act does not refer to, and does not apply to, an indictable offence which is tried summarily.
In DPP v Logan the court was concerned with a charge of common assault under Section 42 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, and the ratio of the decision dealt with the distinction between the offence of common assault under Section 42 of the 1861 Act, which was an offence to be prosecuted summarily, and the offence of common assault under Section 47 of the same Act, which was an indictable offence.
35. During the course of his judgment in this court, with which Finlay C.J. and Egan J. agreed, Blayney J. outlined the history of the legislation from 1924 to 1951 . In regard to Section 7 of the 1951 Act the learned judge stated (at page 262 of the report):
“I think it is quite clear in the first place that the phrase ‘complaint in respect of an indictable offence’ refers to a complaint in respect of an indictable offence which is a ‘scheduled offence’ as defined by Section 2 of the Act of 1951 and may be tried summarily by the District Court under Section 2 sub-section 2 provided that the conditions set out in that sub-section are satisfied. Since Section 7 provides that [*15] Section 10 sub-section 4 of the Petty Sessions (Ireland) Act 1851, shall not apply, the section must be dealing with a situation in which Section 10 would otherwise apply, or otherwise might apply, and so can only be dealing with a complaint in respect of an indictable offence which the District Court has jurisdiction to try summarily under Section 2 sub-section 2. And the probability is that the draftsman of the section took the view that Section 10 sub-section 4 of the Act 1851 would apply by reason of the decision of the Supreme Court in Attorney General v Conlon [1937] IR 762 and that the purpose of the section was to overrule that decision. That is certainly the effect of the section. But whether this was intended or not it is quite clear that the term ‘indictable offence’ in the section must mean an indictable offence which is a scheduled offence under Section 2 of the Act of 1951 and which the District Court has jurisdiction to try summarily under the same section.”
36. I respectfully accept the dictum of Blayney J. It seems to me perfectly clear that the effect of Section 7 of the 1951 Act is to exclude the prosecution of the appellant for these alleged offences from the time limit provisions of the 1851 Act. There is no suggestion in the 1951 Act or otherwise that Section 7 of that Act does not apply in the case of indictable offences prosecuted summarily.
37. As regards the second contention made by Senior Counsel for the appellant in regard to the delay in a summary trial, I appreciate that the use of phrases such as “summary prosecution” , “summary offence” , “summary trial” would tend to create an impression of a procedure allowing for very little delay. Indeed I would accept that the approach of the High Court and of this court has been critical of delay in District Court criminal proceedings in the past. However, this has in general been where unconscionable delay has arisen between the [*16] application for the summons, or the making of the complaint, and the trial of the accused person. In the instant case Mr McMenamin is critical of delay during the investigation of the complaint and the issue of the summons. However in a case where a considerable number of complaints were involved, where research into medical records had to be carried out, and where medical reports on each case had to be obtained, it appears to me that this lapse of time is adequately explained by the factors set out in the affidavit of Detective Sergeant Patrick O’Donnell.
38. A very much greater lapse of time has of course occurred between the dates on which the alleged offences are said to have been committed and the date of the issue of the summonses on the 23rd December 1976. The proper approach to questions of delay in this type of prosecution has been set out in a number of previous judgments of this court. Should this approach be different where the trial is to take place in the District Court rather than before a jury? I think not. The context is the same – a sexual offence or offences against a child or a young person, a long delay in making any complaint to the proper authorities, an explanation of the reasons for that delay, the obvious difficulty for the accused person in preparing and presenting his or her defence – all these and other relevant factors are present whether the trial is summary or on indictment. In my view, the special considerations which have been held to apply in this type of case in the Circuit Court or the Central Criminal Court also apply in the District Court.
39. In recent years both the High Court and this court have considered in detail the proper approach to cases where an accused person has sought to prohibit his trial on charges related to the sexual abuse of children where a lengthy delay has occurred between the date of the alleged offences and the date when complaint was made to the Gardai or other proper [*17] authorities. As was stated by Denham J. in her judgment in P.C. v Director of Public Prosecutions [1999] 2 IR 25 at page 60:-
“Fundamental principles at the heart of a constitutional society are at the kernel of this case. These principles and constitutional rights have to be weighed and balanced by the court. They include the community‘s right to legal issues being determined in the courts; to have criminal charges processed through the courts; the right and duty of the prosecutor to bring to the courts for adjudication allegations of serious child sexual abuse alleged to have taken place; the community’s right to have its society protected, especially its most vulnerable – children. Also at the core of this case is the rule of law; the right of the applicant to a fair trial; the right of the community to the rule of law for all, including the applicant.”
40. Certain principles have been established in these cases. Statute law puts no limitation in time on the prosecution of the alleged offences. Any such statutory limitation is a matter for the Oireachtas.
41. From the point of view of assuring a fair trial for the accused in these cases, however, a delay of twenty or thirty years between the alleged offences and their pending trial is prima facie an inordinate lapse of time. Article 38.1 of the Constitution provides that no person shall be tried on any criminal charge save in due course of law. In addition Article 40.3 imposes duties on the State, and thus on the courts as the judicial arm of Government, which include the protection of such rights as fair procedures. It has been accepted that one of these rights is a right to trial with reasonable expedition. In State (O’Connor) v Fawsitt [1986] IR 362 Finlay C.J. stated:- [*18]
“… a person charged with a criminal offence is entitled, as part of his right to be tried in due course of law, to a trial with reasonable expedition.”
42. Article 6 on the European Convention on Human Rights provides:-
“In the determination of his civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge against him, every one is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law.”
43. The sixth amendment to the United States Constitution provides:-
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial.”
44. The right to reasonable expedition must be assessed in the context of the particular
circumstances in each case. The test is whether there is a real risk that the applicant, by reason of the delay and as a consequence of the delay, would not obtain a fair trial.
45. Cases involving allegations of sexual abuse of children and young people fall into a special category when dealing with questions of delay. In Hogan v President of the Circuit Court [1994] 2 IR 513 at page 521 Finlay C.J. stated:-
“Obviously, in any case where the prosecuting authorities on the information available to them have not got proper grounds for charging any person with an offence, their failure to do so and lapse of time before they are in a position to do so cannot give to an accused a right to prohibit a trial on the basis of the defeat of his constitutional right to an expeditious trial. For example, cases consisting of charges by young children in regard to assaults on them at an early age which are not [*19] brought to the attention of the authorities by such children until very many years after they occurred involve wholly different considerations from those applicable to the present case.”
46. The type of matters to be considered in such cases was also referred to by Finlay C.J. in G. v Director of Public Prosecutions [1994] 1 IR 374 as follows:-
“The court asked to prohibit the trial of a person on such offences, even after a very long time, might well be satisfied and justified in reaching a conclusion that the extent to which the applicant had contributed to the delay in revealing of the offences and their subsequent reporting to the prosecution authorities meant that as a matter of justice he should not be entitled to the order.
The court, therefore, must balance the rights of the alleged victim or victims, and the right of the community to prosecute offences, against the right of the accused to a fair trial, bearing in mind that this includes the right to a trial with reasonable expedition. In doing this, the court must have regard to the question whether the delay of the complainant in making the complaint was in reality attributable to the alleged perpetrator. That delay may have arisen from the authority, undue influence, or what has been described by Denham J. as “dominion” exercised by the accused person over the complainant or complainants. Such “dominion” may arise from close relationship within the family (B v DPP ) or from the fact that the accused holds the position of influence or authority (P. C. v DPP [1999] 2 IR 25 ).
47. In consideration of these factors, however, the court faces the difficulty that it may at least appear to be making an assumption that the accused person is guilty of the offences with which he is charged. The court must bear in mind that in facing criminal charges the accused [*20] person has the benefit of the presumption of innocence. Thus, even if on the evidence before the court it appears likely that the delay in making complaint is a result of the accused’s own actions, the court must still go on to decide whether in the circumstances of the case it will be possible for the accused to receive a fair trial. This is the paramount issue.
48. The difficulty facing the court, and the balance which must be held, has been clearly set out by Keane J. (as he then was) in P.C. v DPP at page 67 of the report as follows:-
“The approach that must be adopted by a court asked to prohibit the trial of a person charged with such offences was dealt with comprehensively by Denham J. speaking for this court in B. v Director of Public Prosecutions [1997] 3 IR 140 , and has been considered by her again to day. It is unnecessary to traverse that ground again in any detail. Clearly, the fact that the offence charged is of a sexual nature is not of itself a factor which would justify the court in disregarding the delay, however inordinate, and allowing the trial to proceed Moreover, even in cases of unlawful carnal knowledge or sexual assault where the complainant is a girl under the age of consent, it is to be borne in mind that the alleged perpetrator may himself be a child. There are cases, however, which this is one, where the disparity in age between the complainant and the person accused is such that the possibility arises that the failure to report the offence is explicable, having regard to the reluctance of young children to accuse adults of improper behaviour and feelings of guilt and shame experienced by the child because his or her participation, albeit unwillingly, in what he or she sees as wrongdoing. In addition, of course, in individual cases there may be threats, actual or implied, of punishment if the alleged offences are reported.
[*21] The delays may also be more readily explicable in cases where, not merely is the person concerned significantly older than the complainant at the time of the alleged offences, but occupies a particular role in relation to him or her e.g. as parent, step-parent, teacher or religious. In such cases, dominion by the alleged perpetrator over the child and a degree of trust on the part of the child may be more readily inferred.
This is not to say that the court in dealing with applications of this nature must disregard the presumption of innocence to which the accused person is entitled But the issue is not whether the court is satisfied to any degree of proof that the accused person committed the crimes with which he is charged. The issue in every such case is whether the court is satisfied as a matter of probability that the circumstances were such as to render explicable the inaction of the alleged victim from the time of the offence until the initiation of the prosecution. It is necessary to stress again that it is not simply the nature of the offence which discharges that onus. All the circumstances of the particular case must be considered before that issue can be resolved.
Manifestly, in cases where the court is asked to prohibit the continuance of a prosecution on the ground of unreasonable delay, the paramount concern of the court will be whether it has been established that there is a real and serious risk of an unfair trial; that, after all, is what is meant by the guarantee of a trial ‘in due course of law’. The delay may be such that, depending on the nature of the charges, a trial should not be allowed to proceed, even though it has not been demonstrated [*22] that the capacity of the accused to defend himself or herself will be impaired. In other cases the first enquiry must be as to what are the reasons for the delay and, in a case such as the present where no blame can be attached to the prosecuting authorities, whether the court is satisfied as a matter of probability that, assuming the complaint to be truthful, the delay in making it was referable to the accused’s own actions.
If that stage has been reached, the final issue to be determined will be whether the degree to which the accused’s ability to defend himself has been impaired is such that the trial should not be allowed to proceed. That is a necessary enquiry, in my view, in every such case, because, given the finding that the delay is explicable by reference to the conduct of the accused is necessarily grounded on an assumption as to the truth of the complaint, it follows that, in the light of the presumption of innocence to which he is entitled, the court asked to halt the trial must still consider whether the degree of prejudice is such as to give rise to a real and serious risk of an unfair trial.”
49. These principles were again set out by Keane C.J. in his judgment in P. O’C v
Director of Public Prosecutions (Supreme Court) unreported 6th July 2000 at pages 8 to 10. Referring to the principles as set out above and as again set out by the learned Chief Justice in the P.O’C case the Chief Justice concludes (at page 9):-
“These principles have been made clear by this court in the State (O’Connor) v
Fawsitt [1986] IR 362; Hogan v The President of the Circuit Court [1992] 2 IR
513; B. v The Director of Public Prosecutions [1997] 3 IR 140 and P.C v The [*23] Director of Public Prosecutions and Another [1999] 2 IR 25 . They remain the law unless and until this court is invited to review the correctness of those decisions and to depart from the principle of stare decisis in accordance with the decision of the court in Attorney General v Ryan´s Car Limited [1965] IR 642 and further concludes that there are compelling reasons for not following the earlier decisions.”
50. Thus the principles of law which govern the present case have been clearly settled by this court. It remains to consider the facts of this case in the light of these principles.
51. Mr Gaffney, on behalf of the Respondent, has argued that the present hearing before this court amounts to a civil trial of the appellant and that the court should decide on the balance of probabilities whether the appellant is guilty of the offences with which he is charged. Mr Gaffney was also critical of the appellant in that he had not directly asserted his innocence in his own affidavit. Mr Gaffney submits that the presumption of innocence has no part to play in the present proceedings.
52. In my view this approach is contrary to the established principles of law as set out by this court and I would reject it. It seems to me also that it would fly in the face of the established principles of criminal law that an accused person should have to undergo a preliminary civil trial in which he would have to put forward his full defence and perhaps himself give evidence, and as a result of which he might be held to be guilty on the balance of probabilities. Even in the present proceedings, in the limited context of attributing reasons for delay in making complaint, it is quite wrong to criticise an accused person for failing to make a direct statement of his innocence or failing to give full details of his defence on affidavit. The undesirability of such requirements has been fully dealt with by Hardiman J. in his judgment in the P.O’C case (at pages 14 to 16) with which I respectfully agree.
[*24] Mr McMenamin, for the appellant, firstly distinguishes this case on the ground that the complainants were not children of tender years at the time of the alleged offences and that therefore they could readily have made a complaint at the time. This is closely related to Mr McMenamin’ s second submission that this is not a case of “dominion” or of continuous abuse over a period of time.
53. It is true that the appellant did not occupy a position of dominance in the complainant’s personal lives comparable to that of the father in the D. v DPP case. Nor did he have the continuing contact which occurred in P.C. v DPP and other similar cases. However, there was clearly a large disparity in age between the appellant and the complainants, who were still relatively young and immature. Also a consultant surgeon is a figure of very considerable power and authority, especially in the hospital in which he normally practices. This would be true even vis-à-vis adult hospital patients to day. That power and authority would be very much more marked in the case of teenagers some twenty to thirty years ago. The complainants have described their embarrassment, their feelings of guilt and their fear that they would not be believed to the psychologist, Mr Carroll. They also gave explanations as to why they failed to make any complaint in the years that have since elapsed.
54. In each case individually Mr Carroll has averred that he found the explanation adequate and understandable. It is clear from his reports that Mr Carroll has carefully gone into considerable detail with each complainant in his interviews with them.
55. I am, of course, aware of the criticisms that have been made in general of diagnosis and psychological assessment of sexual abuse which is alleged to have occurred many years ago. Hardiman J. has surveyed a number of these criticisms in his very full judgment in J.L [*25] v DPP (unreported Supreme Court 6th July 2000). The main criticisms have been directed against the psychological phenomena of repression of memory and recovered memory.
56. In the instant case the expert evidence that is before the court is that of Mr Carroll. He has not been cross-examined or challenged on his evidence. Nor has any expert evidence been brought in rebuttal. In addition, the explanations for delay offered by the complainants and accepted by Mr Carroll do not, in this case, rely on the concepts of repression of memory or recovered memory. The explanations are, in my view, readily understandable to the ordinary lay person.
57. On balance I would accept that the delay of the complainants in reporting the alleged offences has been the result of the position of power and authority occupied by the appellant and by the continuing influence which this power and authority had over them. While this is not an exact parallel with the concept of “dominion” as described in B. v DPP and subsequent decisions, it is in my view sufficient to bring this case into the “special category” of cases of child sexual abuse as accepted by this court. The appellant’s trial on these charges ought not, therefore, be prohibited on grounds of delay alone.
58. The second issue to be considered is whether the appellant has established that there is a real danger of an unfair trial. In this context, the appellant has drawn attention to the paucity of medical records concerning some of the complainants, particularly those who were, or claim to have been, treated in his private consulting rooms. He has also stressed the undoubted fact that he will have difficulty in tracing witnesses who were nurses or administrators in the hospital at the times of the alleged offences. I accept that in this, as in all cases of long-delayed trials, the appellant will face difficulties in putting his defence before the court. I do not consider, however, that the appellant has put forward any specific and particular aspect of his defence which would establish a real and serious risk that his trial [*26] would be unfair. Thus the circumstances of this case seem to me to differ from those of P.O´C v DPP and J.L. v DPP . In the present case the appellant has, if anything, more detailed information available to him (by way of the medical records) than would normally be available to an accused person in a long delayed trial. The onus is on the appellant to establish affirmatively that there is a real and serious risk of an unfair trial. In this case the appellant has indicated a variety of difficulties and problems but in my view they fall short of establishing that a trial in these circumstances would not possess the character of a fair trial as required by the Constitution.
59. I would dismiss the appeal and affirm the order of the learned High Court judge.
H.M. v Director of Public Prosecutions
High Court, January 26, 2004
Judgment of Mr. Justice Murphy delivered the 26th day of January, 2004.
1. Issue
The applicant seeks an injunction by way of judicial review, restraining the respondent from further proceeding with the offences comprised in proceedings entitled “The Director of Public Prosecutions v. H.M., Bill No. 1263/01” at present before the Circuit Criminal Court and a stay on the proceedings pending the determination of the application. Leave for judicial review was granted on the 18th February, 2002 by McKechnie J. on the basis of para. (d) of the statement dated the 15th February, 2002 and the affidavit of the applicant.
The Notice of Motion filed on the 27th February, 2002, seeks to injunct all of the eighteen charges. The reality of applicant’s submissions, given the admissions made by the applicant in relation to two incidents, is that the application is to prohibit the remainder, that is in relation to fourteen of the incidents, from further prosecution.
The issue in this case is a dispute as to the frequency of incidents.
2. Charges
On the 18th August, 2000, the applicant was charged with nine counts of buggery contrary to s. 61 of the Offences Against the Person Act, 1861 and nine charges of indecent assault of a male person, contrary to s. 62 of the Offences Against the Person Act, 1861. All of the offences were alleged to have been committed at periodical intervals between the 1st August, 1983 and the 31st July, 1985. All offences relate to one complainant. The complainant was born on the 10th December, 1967 and the offences were alleged to have been committed when the complainant was aged between 15 years 8 months and 17 years 6 months.
The complainant first contacted the Gardaí on the 15th February, 1999 and made a formal statement on the 24th April, 1999. The applicant was interviewed in relation to the offences on the 3rd November, 1999 on a voluntary basis and in the presence of his solicitor.
3. Applicant’s Submissions
The applicant seeks relief on four grounds:
1. That the prosecution would be in breach of his rights to be tried with due expedition.
2. That the further prosecution of the offences would be in breach of natural and constitutional justice and would be fundamentally unfair, having regard to the lapse of time since the offences were allegedly committed.
3. The further prosecution of the offences would be contrary to natural and constitutional justice and fundamentally unfair that the applicant had been prejudiced in his defence by reason of the lapse of time since the offences were allegedly committed and that there is a real and substantial risk that any trial of the offences charged would be unfair.
4. In addition, the further prosecution of the offences would be unfair and contrary to natural and constitutional justice, having regard to the failure of the prosecution to properly investigate the allegations against the applicant.
Reference was made to P.C. v. D.P.P. [1999] 2 IR 25 at 65 et seq. and to JO’C v. D.P.P. [2000] 3 I.R. 478, PO’C v. D.P.P. [2000] 3 I.R. 87 and J.L. v. D.P.P. [2000] 3 I.R. 122 and, more recently, in D.W. v. D.P.P. (Unreported, Supreme Court 31st October, 2003).
The applicant contended that the lapse of time prior to the making of the complaint was of such a duration as to put the court on enquiry whether the applicant’s right to trial with due expedition had been violated and the circumstances the onus is on the respondent to satisfy the court that the delay is explicable. In the event that the respondent does not so satisfy the court then the applicant contends that, notwithstanding such explanation, his right to a fair trial has been irretrievably compromised by reason of prejudice which has arisen as a result of the delay.
The applicant submitted that there was a substantial delay from the time the applicant emigrated in 1989 to the time the complaint was made in early 1999. That delay falls into the second category to which McGuinness J. had referred in D.W. v. D.P.P. That is the evidence of a psychologist to explain the psychological causes for the phenomenon of delay and to relate those to the facts of the individual case.
The applicant submits that if the court were not satisfied that the delay was explicable the appropriate course would be to injunct the trial (see judgments of the Supreme Court in P.C. v. D.P.P. [1999] 2 IR 25 and B.J. v. D.P.P., (Unreported, Supreme Court, 19th December, 2003).
In B.J. v. D.P.P. the applicant’s submissions in that case appeared to McGuinness J. as appearing “to involve asking this Court not to follow P.C. v. D.P.P., in particular insofar as that judgment held that delay alone might lead to a trial not being allowed to proceed even where it had not been demonstrated ‘that the capacity of an accused to defend himself or herself will be impaired'”.
The applicant submits that if the court is ultimately satisfied that the delay between the alleged offence and the initiation of the prosecution is justified, the court must further examine whether there is a real and substantial risk of an unfair trial and whether the capacity of the applicant to defend himself has been impaired.
The offences were alleged to have occurred in the applicant’s residence with a frequency of as much as once or twice a week. The applicant has averred that three persons, now deceased, would have had knowledge of his routines in the comings and goings to his residence. It was submitted that the inability of these persons to give evidence has prejudiced the applicant.
Reference was made to the passage of Hardiman J. in JO’C v. DPP [2000] 3 I.R. 478 at 504, where it was stated that where a defendant, who was innocent, was exposed to a trial where the only evidence was unsupported assertion and the only defence was their denial, then his position is indeed perilous.
4. Submissions of the Respondent
Mr. Paul Anthony McDermot, S.C. on behalf of the D.P.P., said that the dispute related to the number of incidents only, given that the admission of the accused to two incidents was not disputed. In the circumstances the matter is best dealt with by the jury.
The evidence of the complainant was not subject to cross-examination and for the purposes of judicial review proceedings the court should assume that the complainant’s evidence is true. That is the primary evidence in relation to delay.
The court is entitled to deal with the matter in a commonsense basis in relation to the difficulty in making a complaint against a middle aged priest by a teenager. Moreover there was ample evidence in the complainant’s affidavit that he had come for advice and poured out his problems to the priest. Following the incident the complainant said that the applicant would tell people what happened and that he felt if he told anyone he wouldn’t be the victim but would be the one that caused the priest to come out of grace. It was he who was fallible.
The report of the psychologist, Dr. Dermody, concluded that:
“The delay in the complainant’s complaint is due to the effects of the alleged sexual offences against him. In addition, the unbalance of power between (the complainant) and (the applicant) at the time of the offences further contributes to a reasonable explanation for the delay in reporting the events.”
The respondent submits that the role of such evidence in judicial review has been dealt with by McGuinness J. in D.W. v. D.P.P. at p. 37 of the unreported judgment as follows:
“All such evidence is open to challenge in cross-examination. It must, however, be borne in mind that it is not the task of the expert witness to assess the credibility of the complainant or the guilt or innocence of the applicant. The truth or otherwise of the complaints is to be tested at the trial of the applicant.”
In his submission counsel says that the reasons for the delay are in the affidavit of the complainant himself, which evidence is unchallenged and credible and further substantiated by the evidence of the psychologist.
In relation to prejudice, it was submitted that the three named persons – the housekeeper, the neighbour and the parish priest, all of whom are, the applicant says, deceased, have not been shown to have been able to provide evidence in defence or an alibi. The question of the applicant’s routine is, it is submitted, not relevant. None of the persons mentioned was included in the statement to Gardaí by the applicant who attended voluntarily and with his solicitor.
In any event, according to the admission of the applicant, the abuse admitted had taken place in private. Moreover, the accused, in response to questions by the Gardaí, had described his bedroom with a shower in the alcove in similar terms to the complainant.
Insofar as there were any consistencies in the complainant’s statements, counsel has submitted that the first complaint did not address judicial issues of delay. Moreover, these consistencies are best dealt with by the jury.
The court is entitled, it is submitted, to take into account the attitude of the applicant himself to the charges as being a relevant factor. Reference was made to p. 33 of the DW case where McGuinness J. stated:
“The applicant is fully entitled to the presumption of innocence in regard to all the charges which have been brought against him. However, when considering whether his trial on these charges is to be prohibited, his own attitude to the charges is a relevant factor.”
He referred to the balancing exercise in relation to the list of factors referred to by Denham J. in B v. DPP [1997] 3 I.R. 140 at 195. There was no question of any physical evidence being absent as had occurred in PO’C v. DPP [2000] 3 I.R. 87. There was no issue regarding the memory of the accused.
In reply, Mr. Colm O Briain referred to the nature of the charges. While consent was not a defence in rape, it was relevant in the other charges.
The question of delay was not a matter of whether it was reasonable or cynical but whether a decision had been taken not to complain. The relevant period was not at the time of the alleged offences but later, after 1989, when the complainant went to London. The delay from 1989 to 1998 fell into the third category where it was necessary to have a more subtle analysis of the continuous reasons not to complain.
The complainant had not initially asked why he did not provide an explanation which he subsequently provided. He did indeed explain the delay in his first statement to the Gardaí and had further stated that “it was always on my mind”. There was a lack of cogency of internal consistency in the complainant’s own affidavit particularly in relation to what he alleged to be the directions by the applicant that he should come to the alleyway at certain times.
There were no specific times referred to in the charges. There was an allegation of twice weekly. The witnesses could have helped with regard to the issue of frequency. Their absence prejudiced the applicant.
5. Decision of the Court
5.1 This is a case where serious allegations have been made against the applicant who was in a position of authority, some 31 years older than the complainant who was 15 at the time of the alleged incident and who has admitted two of the incidents.
As is conceded, there is no question of the court prohibiting the entire trial in respect of all the charges. The issue before the court is whether the other charges should be prohibited on the grounds of delay between 1989 and 1998.
Counsel for the applicant raises an important issue with regard to the decision not to complain. The psychologist, in her evidence, had stated that she was not comfortable with the word ‘decision’ in relation to what she said was a process of coming to a decision to complain.
It is clear from the evidence of the complainant that, as a result of the incidents alleged, that his life was in chaos. The psychologist refers to it being on his mind even when he left the jurisdiction. She described his problems with addiction. She saw no inconsistency with the matter being on his mind and him attempting to put it out of his mind.
Matters came to a head where he, having consulted with his general practitioner, had been given an appointment to see a Consultant Psychiatrist in relation to migraine suffered from a head injury where he fell. Before meeting the consultant he had made complaints to the Church, to the police and, through them, to the Gardaí. He was subsequently referred by the psychiatrist to a therapist.
Emphasis had been placed on the complainant’s decision not to complain by the applicant as indicating an ability to complain and freedom from dominance after 1989. On the other hand, the psychologist was satisfied that the eventual complaint was a process rather than a change in decision. The etymology of the word derives from the word to cut in Latin and indicates a determination, resolution of a trial, contest or question. To that extent it is clear cut and not an ambivalence, feeling or postponement. It does not seem to me, from the evidence, that there was any determination, any positive action in relation to not deciding but rather an unfortunate sequelae dating from the time of the complainant’s Junior Certificate which led to his not achieving to the same extent as his older siblings, and eventually led to his emigration to London. The psychologist says that the only trauma that he had was in relation to the alleged abuse. Taking as I must that the complainant’s complaints were truthful and, in the main, uncontradicted, it seems that it was this factor that predominantly led to the chaos hinted at by the complainant himself and described by the psychologist in relation to the drink and drugs abuse. The process of making the complaint emanated not from a complaint to his G.P. and consultant but rather to the head injury, migraine and appointment with the psychiatrist in April, 1999, to make the complaints to the Church and, ultimately, to the Gardaí in February, 1999.
5.2 In Z v. DPP [1994] 2 I.L.R.M. 481 at 498, Finlay C.J. stated:
“This Court in the recent case of D v. DPP [1994] 2 I.R. 465 unanimously laid down the general principle that the onus of proof which is on an accused person who seeks an order prohibiting his trial on the ground that circumstances have occurred which would render it unfair, is that he should establish that there is a real risk that by reason of those circumstances . . . he could not obtain a fair trial.
. . . that where one speaks of an onus to establish a real risk of an unfair trial it necessarily and inevitably means an unfair trial which cannot be avoided by appropriate rulings and directions on the part of the trial judge. The risk is a real one but the unfairness of trial must be an unavoidable unfairness of trial.” (at 499)
I have carefully considered the factors enunciated by Denham J. in B v. DPP [1997] 3 I.R. 140 at 195. There was a delay. Reasons were given by the complainant himself and commented on by the psychologist as reasonable. The applicant, as accused, according to the evidence of the complainant did make threats at the time but there was no evidence of any threats made after the incidents ceased. The accused has asserted his constitutional rights, as is his entitlement, but has also admitted to some of the incidents.
It does not appear to me, on the balance of probabilities, that the applicant will suffer prejudice in his trial. There is no doubt that the court will not accede to, nor does the applicant go so far, to prohibit the entire trial. In relation to the matters in which there has been no admission, it does not seem to me that the absence of the parish priest, the housekeeper or the neighbour can prejudice the accused. Not alone has the applicant (the accused) not stated what evidence they could have given other than the issue of his routine, but it is clear, on his own admission, that the charges in relation to which some admission has been made were incidents in relation to which none of these, nor other persons were present. Essentially they were in private.
No evidence has been given in relation to the pre-trial incarceration or of the length of time of pre-trial anxiety and concern of the accused. The question of limitation or impairment of the defence does not extend to the recollection of the applicant nor are there any circumstances which render the case into a special category other than the category of a person in authority against a young teenager. It is clear to me that the community has a right to have offences prosecuted. The applicant is entitled to the presumption of innocence and to all the defences available to him in the trial. It would appear to me that many of the issues relate to the credibility of the parties and are best dealt with by the jury.
I should echo the comments by the Chief Justice in Barry v. DPP, (Unreported, Supreme Court, 17th December, 2003) by emphasising a conclusion reached by this court is on the assumption that the complaints were true. Manifestly, making such an assumption for the purpose of a judicial review application does not and cannot amount to a finding regarding the applicant’s guilt, as a matter of probability, of either the matters in relation to which he has made admissions or in relation to other matters. Accordingly I refuse the application.
In the circumstances the application cannot succeed.
DPP v Devins
[2012] IESC 7
udgment delivered on the 8th day of February 2012 by Denham C.J.
1. The primary issues on this appeal are: (a) whether the offence of buggery was a statutory offence under s. 61 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861, referred to as “the Act of 1861”, or whether it was a common law offence; and (b) whether M.O’M., the notice party/appellant, referred to as “the appellant”, may be prosecuted for the offence of buggery in respect of acts constituting that offence, which were allegedly committed prior to the repeal of s. 61 of the Act of 1861.
2. The appellant was a priest who held a teaching post in a secondary school in the west of Ireland. He faces charges relating to a 13 year old boy and a 14 year old boy at the school. On the 20th June, 2007, the appellant was charged with the following offences:-
(i) buggery contrary to s. 61 of the Act of 1861 on a date unknown between 1st September, 1970 and 31st December, 1970;
(ii) indecent assault contrary to s. 62 of the Act of 1861 on a date unknown between the 1st September 1970, and 30th June, 1971; and
(iii) indecent assault contrary to s. 62 of the Act of 1861 on a date unknown between the 1st September, 1970, and the 31st December, 1970.
3. On the 20th June, 2007, the matter came before Judge Devins, the respondent, referred to as “the respondent”, evidence of arrest, charge and caution of the appellant was given, and the matter was adjourned for service of the book of evidence.
4. On the 18th July, 2007, the respondent indicated her doubts as to whether the charges were good in law, and she made no order in relation to the charges. It appears that the respondent was of the view that since the repeal of s. 61 and s. 62 of the Act of 1861 those charges were not grounded in law. The respondent made no order in relation to all three charges.
5. On direction of the Director of Public Prosecutions, referred to as “the D.P.P.”, the appellant was arrested and charged on the 19th September, 2007, with the following offences:-
(i) buggery contrary to s. 61 of the Act of 1861, as amended by the Statute Revision Act, 1892, on a date unknown between 1st September, 1970 and 31st December, 1970;
(ii) indecent assault contrary to common law on a date unknown between the 1st September, 1970 and the 31st September, 1970; and
(iii) indecent assault contrary to common law on a date unknown between the 1st September, 1970 and the 30th June, 1971.
6. On the 19th September, 2007, the matter came before the respondent and evidence of arrest, charge and caution was given. However, the respondent considered that she was not satisfied that the charges were grounded on good law and she would not accept the evidence of the arrest, charge and caution. The respondent made no order.
Judicial Review Proceedings
7. On the 19th November, 2007, the D.P.P. obtained leave to bring these judicial review proceedings.
8. The orders sought by the D.P.P. included:-
(i) An order of Certiorari quashing the decision made by the respondent on the 19th September, 2007, to make no order in respect of the three charge sheets against the appellant.
(ii) An order of mandamus requiring the respondent to accept the evidence of arrest, charge and caution that was given on the 19th September, 2007, and to proceed to deal with the three charges in the ordinary way.
(iii) A declaration that the offence of buggery contrary to s. 61 of the Act of 1861 is a valid offence recognised by law if it relates to dates of alleged offences that are prior to the repeal of the said s. 61.
(iv) If necessary, a declaration that the offence of indecent assault contrary to common law is a valid offence recognised by law.
(v) If necessary, an order of Certiorari quashing the decision made by the respondent on the 18th July, 2007, to make no order in the prosecution of the appellant.
High Court
9. On the 2nd December, 2009, the High Court (O’Keeffe J.) delivered a reserved judgment. The learned High Court judge stated that it was his opinion that the offence of buggery was a statutory offence, and that it was permissible to prosecute in respect of an alleged breach in the circumstances.
10. On the 17th December, 2009 the High Court ordered that:-
“In respect of the Order made by the Respondent on the 19th day of September 2007 at Castlebar in the County of Mayo in proceedings entitled The Director of Public Prosecutions at the suit of Garda Edward P. McLoughlin v. [M.O’M.] the Court doth grant
(i) an Order of Certiorari quashing the decision made by the respondent on 19th September 2007 to make no Order in respect of the three charge sheets against the notice party
(ii) a declaration that the respondent should accept the evidence of arrest charge and caution that was given on the 19th day of September 2007 and to proceed to deal with the three charges in the ordinary way
(iii) a declaration that the offence of buggery contrary to Section 61 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 is a valid offence recognised by law if it relates to dates of alleged offences that are prior to the repeal of the said s.61.”
The High Court made no order as to costs.
Notice of Appeal
11. The appellant has filed a notice of appeal, including the following grounds of appeal:-
(a) The learned trial judge erred in law and/or in fact in determining that the offence of buggery prior to its repeal by s.14 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, 1993, was a statutory offence.
(b) The learned trial Judge erred in law and in fact in making the determination on the basis that he had been referred to “no superior authority than that of McWilliam J. in the Norris [Norris v. The A.G. [1984] IR 36] case where he states his conclusion is that offence of buggery is a statutory one”.
(c) That the learned trial Judge erred in law and in fact in finding that s.61 of the Act of 1861, created the statutory offence of buggery.
Cross Appeal
12. The D.P.P. has served a cross appeal on the issue of costs. It was submitted that the learned High Court judge erred in law or in fact by making no order for costs in favour of the D.P.P., who was the successful moving party in the application for judicial review, and by departing from the principle that costs should follow the event, in circumstances where there were no exceptional circumstances justifying a departure from the principle.
First Issue
13. The first issue to consider is whether buggery was a statutory offence or an offence at common law.
Legal Authorities
14. Legal authorities have written on the nature of the offence of buggery. In Pádraigh A. Ó Síocháin’s, The Criminal Law of Ireland (7th Ed., Fóilsiúcháin Dlí, 1981) the author states, of buggery, at page 143:-
“It is punishable under section 61 Offences against the Person Act 1861 …it is a felony at common law.”
In Peter Charleton’s Offences against the Person, (Round Hall Press, 1992), Peter Charleton (as he then was) stated at p. 296, paragraph 8.50:-
“Buggery is a felony at common law the penalty for which was fixed by section 61 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861.”
In Sean E. Quinn’s Criminal Law in Ireland, (3rd Ed., Irish Law Publishing, 1998) at p. 128, it is stated that:-
“Buggery is a common law offence; Section 61 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861 merely provides the penalty, it does not create the offence.”
15. One can also find legal authorities which refer to buggery as a statutory offence.
16. Thus it is necessary to construe the relevant statutes.
Legislation – Nature of Offence
17. The relevant statute is the Act of 1861. Section 61 stated:-
“Whosoever shall be convicted of the abominable crime of buggery, committed either with mankind or with any animal, shall be liable, at the discretion of the Court, to be kept in penal servitude for life or for any term not less than ten years.”
The Statute Law Revision Act 1892, referred to as “the Act of 1892”, amended s. 61 of the Act of 1861 by deleting the words “at the discretion of the Court” and “or for any term not less than ten years.” Thus, there is no description of the offence of buggery and no ingredients set out. The section merely provided for sentencing options and upon amendment, it provided for one sentence, which was penal servitude for life.
18. Section 62 of the Act of 1861 provided for an attempt to commit “an infamous crime”.
It stated:-
“Whosoever shall attempt to commit the said abominable crime, or shall be guilty of any assault with intent to commit the same, or of any indecent assault upon any male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted thereof shall be liable at the discretion of the Court, to be kept in penal servitude for any term not exceeding ten years and not less than three years, or to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.”
The Act of 1892 amended s. 62 of the Act of 1861 by removing the words “at the discretion of the Court” and the words “and not less than three years, or to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.” Thus a person convicted of the stated misdemeanours would be liable to be kept in penal servitude for any term not exceeding ten years.
19. Section 61 of the Act of 1861 was repealed by s.14 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993, referred to as “the Act of 1993”, where it was stated:-
“The enactments specified in column (2) of the Schedule to this Act are hereby repealed to the extent specified in column (3) of that Schedule.”
The schedule referred to:-
“Sections 61 and 62 (save in so far as they apply to buggery or attempted buggery with animals).”
20. Thus, s. 61, which is in issue in this appeal, and which determined the sentence for the offence of buggery, was repealed in 1993.
21. The offence of buggery itself was abolished also. Section 2 of the Act of 1993 stated:-
“Subject to sections 3 and 5 of this Act, any rule of law by virtue of which buggery between persons is an offence is hereby abolished.”
22. Section 3 of the Act of 1993 provided that a person who committed or attempted to commit an act of buggery with a person under the age of 17 years, other than a spouse, shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction on indictment to terms of imprisonment outlined, which varied depending on differing circumstances, e.g. the age of the person under the age of 17 years. Section 4 provided that a male person who commits or attempts to commit an act of gross indecency with another male person under the age of 17 years shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years.
23. A consequence of this Act of 1993 was that the act of buggery committed consensually between adults was no longer criminalised, while the law protected minors by creating the above recited offences, which would apply prospectively.
24. I am satisfied that the offence of buggery was a common law offence. And, as with so many common law offences, such as murder, there was a statutory provision providing for sentence. Thus, s. 61 of the Act of 1861 provided the penalty for the offence of buggery. The repeal of s. 61 by s. 14 of the Act of 1993 meant that the provision for sentencing was repealed. The offence of buggery was not altered by s. 14 of the Act of 1993.
25. However, s. 2 of the Act of 1993 abolished the offence of buggery. In other words, the common law offence of buggery was abolished by s. 2 of the Act of 1993.
26. If s. 61 were, contrary to my view, the section maintaining the offence of buggery, it would have been repealed by s. 14 and there would have been no need for any other provision. However, it was not. The sentence alone was repealed by s. 14. Section 2 of the Act of 1993 abolished the offence of buggery.
27. The fact that the provision for sentence in s. 61 of the Act of 1861 was abolished by one statutory provision of the Act of 1993, and that the offence of buggery itself was abolished by another statutory provision, supports the view I take that s. 61 of the Act of 1861 provided only for sentence.
Second Issue: Legislation – elapse of time
28. The next issue for determination is whether in the circumstances the appellant can be charged with an offence which occurred before the statute providing for the sentence and the offence itself were abolished in 1993.
29. The issue is complicated by the fact that there were no transitional arrangements made in the Act of 1993.
30. Section 21 of the Interpretation Act, 1937 made provision for transitional arrangements. It provided:-
“(1) Where an Act of the Oireachtas repeals the whole or a portion of previous statute, then, unless the contrary intention appears, such repeal shall not—
(a) revive anything not in force or not existing immediately before such repeal takes effect, or
(b) affect the previous operation of the statute or portion of a statute so repealed or anything duly done or suffered thereunder, or
(c) affect any right, privilege, obligation, or liability acquired, accrued, or incurred under the statute or portion of a statute so repealed, or
(d) affect any penalty, forfeiture, or punishment incurred in respect of any offence against or contravention of the statute or portion of a statute so repealed which was committed before such repeal, or
(e) prejudice or affect any legal proceedings, civil or criminal, pending at the time of such repeal in respect of any such right, privilege, obligation, liability, offence, or contravention as aforesaid.
(2) Where an Act of the Oireachtas repeals the whole or a portion of a previous statute, then, unless the contrary intention appears, any legal proceedings, civil or criminal, in respect of any right, privilege, obligation, or liability acquired, accrued, or incurred under or any offence against or contravention of the statute or portion of a statute so repealed may be instituted, continued or enforced, and any penalty, forfeiture, or punishment in respect of any such offence or contravention may be imposed and carried out as if such statute or portion of a statute had not been repealed.”
(3) Where an Act of the Oireachtas or a portion of any such Act ceases by any means or for any reason (other than repeal by a subsequent Act of the Oireachtas) to be in force, the preceding sub-sections of this section shall apply and have effect in relation to such Act or portion of an Act as if such cesser were caused by a repeal effected by an Act of the Oireachtas, and accordingly, for the purposes of such application, every reference in either of the said preceding sub-sections to a repeal shall be construed as a reference to a cesser by any means or for any reason (other than such repeal) to be in force.”
31. Thus the Interpretation Act, 1937, contained a saving provision in relation to the situation where a statutory offence had been abolished. It enabled the institution of proceedings after the repeal of the statute. However, there was no such saving provision in relation to a common law offence. As buggery was a common law offence the saving provisions in the Interpretation Act, 1937 do not apply to that offence.
32. Section 27 of the Interpretation Act, 2005, is expressed in very similar terms. It provides:-
“(1) Where an enactment is repealed, the repeal does not—
(a) revive anything not in force or not existing immediately
before the repeal,
(b) affect the previous operation of the enactment or anything
duly done or suffered under the enactment,
(c) affect any right, privilege, obligation or liability acquired,
accrued or incurred under the enactment,
(d) affect any penalty, forfeiture or punishment incurred in
respect of any offence against or contravention of the enactment
which was committed before the repeal, or
(e) prejudice or affect any legal proceedings (civil or criminal)
pending at the time of the repeal in respect of any such
right, privilege, obligation, liability, offence or contravention.
(2) Where an enactment is repealed, any legal proceedings (civil
or criminal) in respect of a right, privilege, obligation or liability acquired, accrued or incurred under, or an offence against or contravention of, the enactment may be instituted, continued or enforced, and any penalty, forfeiture or punishment in respect of such offence or contravention may be imposed and carried out, as if the enactment had not been repealed.”
33. Thus a prosecution was enabled and envisaged as capable of being instituted in relation to a statutory offence alleged to have been committed prior to the date of the abolition of the offence. However, it is noteworthy that s. 27(1)(a) of the Interpretation Act, 1937 and s. 27(1)(a) of the Interpretation Act, 2005, both specifically provide that where an enactment is repealed the repeal does not revive anything not in force or not existing immediately before the repeal. Thus it is envisaged that there is a continuous stream of law addressing the issue, and that there was no gap or lacuna envisaged between a repeal of a statute and later legislation.
34. The matter of the abolition of offences at common law, and the effect on prosecutions, was addressed in the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997.
Section 1 provided:-
“(1) Where an Act of the Oireachtas abolishes, abrogates or otherwise repeals an offence which is an offence at common law, then unless the contrary intention appears, such abolition, abrogation or repeal shall not—
(a) affect the previous operation of the law in relation to the offence so abolished, abrogated or repealed or any other offence or anything duly done or suffered thereunder,
(b) affect any penalty, forfeiture or punishment incurred in respect of any such offence so abolished, abrogated or repealed or any other offence which was committed before such abolition, abrogation or repeal, or
(c) prejudice or affect any proceedings pending at the time of such abolition, abrogation or repeal in respect of any such offence or any other offence.
(2) Where an Act of the Oireachtas abolishes, abrogates or otherwise repeals an offence which is an offence at common law, then unless the contrary intention appears, any proceedings in respect of any such offence or any other offence committed before such abolition, abrogation or repeal of any such offence at common law may be instituted, continued or enforced and any penalty, forfeiture or punishment in respect of any such offence at common law or any other offence may be imposed and carried out as if such offence at common law had not been abolished, abrogated or otherwise repealed.
(3) This section applies to an offence which is an offence at common law abolished, abrogated or otherwise repealed before or after the passing of this Act.
(4) If, because of any or all of its provisions, this section would, but for the provisions of this subsection, conflict with the constitutional rights of any person, the provisions of this section shall be subject to such limitations as are necessary to secure that they do not so conflict, but shall otherwise be of full force and effect.”
35. Therefore, as the offence of buggery was abolished in 1993, it is necessary to construe the above section of the Act to determine whether the appellant may be prosecuted for the offence of buggery alleged to have been committed in 1970.
36. Section 1(1) of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, provides that where an Act of the Oireachtas abolishes an offence at common law, then unless a contrary intention appears, such abolition shall not affect the previous operation of the law, affect any penalty incurred in respect of such offence, or prejudice any proceedings pending at the time of such abolition. In this case, no penalty had occurred, nor was any proceeding pending against the appellant, at the time of the abolition of the offence. Thus of s. 1(1) neither (b) or (c) are relevant to this case. Analysis of s. 1(1)(a) requires it to be done in the context of the section as a whole, and I shall consider the section as a whole later in this judgment.
37. Section 1(2) provides that where an Act of the Oireachtas abolishes an offence at common law, then unless the contrary intention appears, any proceedings in respect of such offence may be instituted, continued or enforced, and any penalty in respect of any such common law offence may be imposed as if such offence at common law had not been abolished.
38. Section 1(3) provides that the section applies to an offence at common law, abolished before or after the passing of that Act.
39. In this case, the common law offence of buggery was abolished in 1993, which was four years before the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997.
40. Thus, on the face of s. 1(1), (2) and (3) of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, the Oireachtas stated that even if an offence at common law had been abolished before the passing of that Act, the Court could treat it as not having been abolished. This legislative provision was stated in a general sense. Individual offences were not identified. There was, for example, no reference to the offence of buggery.
41. However, the Oireachtas entered a caveat by s. 1(4). It provided that if, because of the provisions in s. 1, the section would, but for the provisions of s. 1(4), conflict with the constitutional rights of any person, the provisions of this section shall be subject to such limitations as are necessary to secure that they do not so conflict, but otherwise be of full force and effect. I understand this saving provision as to apply to protect constitutional due process, to protect a person where constitutional rights could be impugned.
An Analogy
42. An analogy may be drawn with the common law offence of assault and battery and litigation thereon.
43. The Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997, abolished, amongst others, the offences of assault and battery, and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. The relevant provisions came into force on the 19th August, 1997. It contained no transitional measures relating to situations where alleged crimes had been committed prior to the 19th August, 1997, but which had not yet been prosecuted.
44. In Grealis v. D.P.P. [2001] 3 IR 144, the Court considered a situation where the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997, which, amongst others, abolished the common law offence of assault and battery and assault occasioning actual bodily harm, came into force on the 19th August, 1997. It contained no transitional measures in relation to situations where alleged crimes had been committed prior to the 19th August, 1997, but which had not yet been prosecuted.
45. The Interpretation Act, 1937, contained saving provisions allowing for the maintenance of prosecutions of statutory offences after the statutes under which they had been constituted had been repealed; however, no such saving provisions existed where common law offences were abolished. The Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997 came into force on the 4th November, 1997, and purported to allow for the institution and maintenance of prosecutions after the common law offence had been abolished. However, section 1(4) provided that the Act would be subject to such limitations as are necessary to ensure that it did not conflict with the constitutional rights of any person.
46. The applicant in Grealis v. D.P.P. [2001] 3 IR 144 was charged on foot of two summonses for common law assault and on a third summons with assault causing actual bodily harm contrary to s. 47 of the Act of 1861. The Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, came into force after the proceedings were instituted. This Court held that the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997 was clear and unambiguous and must be read as abolishing, amongst others, the common law offence of assault and battery and that the said Act contained no saving or transitional provisions in respect of common law offences. It was held that the offence of assault causing actual bodily harm was a common law offence for which there were specific statutory penalties.
47. It was held that the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, should be interpreted as having a prospective effect in order for it not to offend against the constitutional prohibition on retrospective penal legislation, contained in Article 15.5 of the Constitution. Thus, it was held that the Act did not apply to prosecutions, for repealed common law offences, initiated before the Act came into effect.
48. The facts are not the same as in this case. Indeed, Hardiman J. anticipated facts such as arise in this case. He queried whether the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, would operate to allow a prosecution of a common law offence committed prior to its repeal but where the prosecution was initiated after the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, came into force. It is that issue which is required to be determined in this case.
49. In Grealis v. D.P.P. [2001] 3 IR 144, Keane C.J. referred to judgments in England and Wales and the United States of America and, at p. 156 to 157 stated:-
“This formidable body of authority, it is said on behalf of the first respondent, applies only to the repeal of statutory offences. No logical or principled distinction was drawn, however, between the application of this well settled rule of law to statutory offences and to common law offences and, with good reason, since it is clear that there is no such distinction. Common sense, as well as authority, leads one inexorably to the conclusion that, where a common law offence is repealed by statute, in the absence of any saving provision it ceases to exist for all purposes and no prosecution can be maintained in respect of it after the repealing statute has taken effect.”
50. Keane C.J. considered several principles of construction of statutes, and he held that s. 28(1) of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997, was clear and unambiguous, and that the only construction of which it is capable is that the common law offences to which it applied are abolished from the coming into force of the section. He stated at p. 158:-
“They cease to exist in law …”
51. The decision of this Court in that case was that the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997, was clear and unambiguous and must be read as abolishing, inter alia, the common law offences of assault and battery and that it contained no saving or transitional provisions in relation to those common law offences. It was held that the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, should be interpreted as having prospective effect in order that it not offend against the constitutional prohibition on retrospective penal legislation contained in Article 15.5 of the Constitution. Further, it was held that the said Act did not apply to prosecutions for repealed common law offences instituted before the Act came into force.
52. In this case, the alleged offence occurred before the offence of buggery was abolished and the prosecution was instituted after the said Act had come into force.
Analysis
53. It appears to me that the following analysis applies. The offence of buggery was a common law offence. It was abolished in 1993.
54. As Keane C.J., said in Grealis v. D.P.P. [2001] 3 IR 144 of an offence in a similar situation:
“… Where a common offence is repealed by statute, in the absence of any saving provision it ceases to exist for all purposes and no prosecution can be maintained in respect of it after the repealing statute has taken effect.”.
55. If this case was in the same situation as arose in Grealis that would be the end of the matter, the appeal would be allowed on this issue.
56. However, there was subsequent legislation by the Oireachtas. Four years after 1993 the Oireachtas enacted the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997.
57. There was thus a four year elapse of time during which the offence was abolished and no saving or transitional provisions existed.
58. A lacuna existed between 1993 and 1997. The appellant could not have been prosecuted for the alleged offence of buggery between 1993 and 1997. Between 1993 and 1997 there was no legal foundation to prosecute the appellant for the alleged offence of buggery. No transitional arrangements to prosecute earlier alleged offences were made in 1993.
59. In 1997 some transitional arrangements were made for prosecutions; the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, is set out earlier in the judgment.
60. However, the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, was a general Act. There was no specific reference to the offence of buggery. The legal position of a person such as the appellant was not clear. There is a well established requirement of clarity in the criminal law so that an accused may know his position. The situation from 1997 was not established in a clear and plain fashion.
61. Further, the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, if applied to the appellant, would be retrospectively re-establishing the offence for the purposes of prosecution of offences committed prior to 1993, for which the appellant would not have been liable between 1993 and 1997.
62. Section 1(4) of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997 is set out in detail earlier in the judgment. It is a caveat. It provides that if the section would, but for s. 1(4), conflict with the constitutional rights of a person, the provisions of the section shall be subject to such limitations as are necessary to secure that they do not so conflict.
63. The appellant is entitled to due process of law. From 1993 to 1997 he could not be prosecuted for the offence alleged against him, the offence had ceased to exist and no prosecutions could be brought against him, nor could any penalty be inflicted for violation of that law while it had been in force.
64. The Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, introduced new law. It purported to retrospectively introduce law so as to re-introduce liability for the actions of persons under the law which had ceased to exist.
65. The Interpretation Acts of 1937 and 2005 made transitional arrangements for statutory offences. However, they specifically dealt with situations where there was no lacuna in time. They provided that where an Act of the Oireachtas repeals the whole or a portion of a previous statute then, unless the contrary intention appears, such repeal shall not revive anything not in force or not existing immediately before such repeal takes place, etc. No such provisions are to be found in the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997.
66. Constitutional due process is guarded by s. 1(4) of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997.
67. A prosecution now for the abolished offence of buggery would conflict with a constitutional right not to be exposed to a prosecution for an offence where the Oireachtas had clearly abolished the offence, and where no transitional provisions were provided. The appellant has a constitutional right to be tried in due process of law. In all the circumstances it would be a breach of such a right to prosecute for an offence which was so abolished. Such a prosecution would apply the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, retrospectively, in breach of fundamental constitutional principles. Because of s. 1(4) of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, that Act cannot be interpreted as validating the purported criminal proceedings against the appellant for the offence of buggery, which proceeding would have been unlawful prior to its enactment.
68. An attempt to revive a previously barred prosecution, after the lacuna of four years, would be counter to fundamental principles of the Constitution. Section 1(4) of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, protects fundamental principles and procedures.
69. I am reinforced in this analysis by the consequences which would arise if the offence of buggery could be prosecuted now. If the offence of buggery was re-established, and liability re-established, in 1997, then liability could arise once again for acts between consensual adults that occurred prior to 1993.
70. For all these reasons, I am satisfied that the Act of 1997 does not enable or permit the prosecution of the appellant for the offence of buggery.
Conclusion
71. Buggery was an offence contrary to common law for many centuries, until it was abolished in 1993. The abolition of the offence was complete, irrespective of age or gender. Section 61 of the Act of 1861 provided the sentence for the offence, prior to it being repealed in 1993 also.
72. There were no saving provisions for transitional prosecutions in the Act of 1993. Thus from that date the common law offence of buggery was abolished. An important consequence was that consenting adults could no longer be prosecuted. In 1993 the Oireachtas established statutory provisions prospectively protecting children and young persons.
73. In this case the alleged offences occurred in 1970 and 1971. The offence of buggery was abolished in 1993, and, while the Interpretation Act, 1937, had a saving provision in relation to a statutory offence, it had no such provision in relation to a common law offence, and it did not apply to the common law offence of buggery. Thus there were no transitional provisions in 1993. The Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, did have a saving provision regarding an abolished common law offence. However, this raises the issue as to whether it can retrospectively revive an offence which has been abolished four years previously.
74. A lacuna was created in 1993 with the abolition of the common law offence of buggery, when no provisions were made for the prosecution of earlier offences. While the Oireachtas continued a policy of protecting children and young people from such activity, the offence of buggery no longer existed.
75. From 1993 to 1997, there was no statutory provision preserving a right to prosecute for the offence of buggery or the liability to be so prosecuted for offences prior to 1993. This approach was consistent with the European Court of Human Rights’ decision in Norris v. Ireland (1991) 13 EHRR 186 and the European Convention on Human Rights. The previous offence would no longer apply to consenting adults.
76. The specific lacuna left was as to an alleged offence by an adult with children and young persons prior to the abolition of the offence. While the Act of 1993 created new offences protecting children and young persons, these offences were not retrospective.
77. I am satisfied that the Act of 1997 could not, and did not, revive the common law offence of buggery, for a number of reasons.
78. First, the law requires that criminal offences be established clearly and unambiguously. The position as to the alleged offence of buggery after 1993 is neither.
79. Criminal liability for the offence was removed by the Act of 1993. Thus, from 1993 to 1997, the appellant was not liable to be prosecuted for the offence.
80. If such an Act had made a transitional provision in relation to minors at the time of abolishing the offence there would be no lacuna, there would be no ambiguity, nor any question of retrospectivity.
81. The Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, may not be construed constitutionally as applying liability for an offence retrospectively, where criminal liability was removed from 1993, and where no transitional arrangements for prosecution were made.
82. If, contrary to my belief, the offence of buggery could be prosecuted after 1997 it would have a significant consequence. It would apply to consenting adults. Any such construction would be constitutionally frail and it would have the infirmity of applying the offence to consenting adults in respect of acts done prior to 1993, which was addressed in Norris v. Ireland in the European Court of Human Rights, and subsequently by the Oireachtas when the offence was so abolished.
83. In all the circumstances, I am satisfied that the D.P.P. may not prosecute the appellant for an offence of buggery, which was abolished in 1993. The situation in 1993, was clear, the offence of buggery was abolished. Further, it cannot be anticipated that the D.P.P. would now prosecute consenting adults, nor that such a prosecution was envisaged by the Oireachtas. All in all, I am satisfied that the offence of buggery was a common law offence, it was abolished in 1993, and no words of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, can retrospectively revive the right to the D.P.P. to prosecute, or the liability to be prosecuted, for this offence.
84. Consequently, I would hold that the learned trial judge erred in law in finding that the offence of buggery was a statutory offence and in finding that the Act of 1861 created the statutory offence of buggery. The offence of buggery was an offence at common law and was abolished by the legislature in 1993. The Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, does not permit the prosecution of the offence of buggery for acts committed prior to 1993, as, quite apart from the appropriate construction of the statute, such a consequence would not be consistent with the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Norris v. Ireland (1991) 13 EHRR 186, or the legislation abolishing the offence in 1993. Consequently, I would allow the appeal, insofar as it applies to the charge of buggery, and so the appellant may not be prosecuted for that offence.
85. No issue was raised, or argued, as to the two charges of indecent assault, which are not affected by this judgment.
JUDGMENT of Mr. Justice Hardiman delivered the 8th day of February, 2012.
This case arises out of an attempt to prosecute the applicant for a number of sexual offences allegedly committed in 1970/71. This attempt was made more than 35 years after the alleged events. As will be seen, the case has become afflicted with difficulties of several kinds, mainly due to ill considered changes in the law without proper thought about future prosecutions.
Central Point.
The central point in this case was flagged to the prosecution by Judge Devins on the day the Book of Evidence was produced before the learned District Judge. She pointed out that the Section which the prosecution relied upon as creating the offence of buggery (s.61 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861) had been repealed by the Oireachtas in the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, 1993. If the charge had been brought as “ buggery contrary to Common Law) she would no doubt have pointed out that the same Act provided that “… any rule of law by virtue of which buggery between persons is an offence is hereby abolished”.
Very remarkably, no transitional provisions were contained in the Act of 1993. Such provisions are absolutely necessary if the Oireachtas desire to preserve the possibility of prosecuting for a repealed or abolished offence after the date of the repeal or abolition, unless this issue is covered by some general provision. The failure to include transitional provisions in the Act of 1993 is inexplicable, and no explanation has been attempted. Thus, the State has had to fall back on a general provision. But which general provision? Different provisions will apply depending on whether the offence in question is an offence contrary to statute, or an offence contrary to Common Law. This issue, which would normally be one of technical or historical interest only, has taken a great deal of time on the hearing of this appeal. The question then arises as to whether the general provision appropriate is effective to create a criminal liability in the Notice Party several years after the offence of buggery between persons had been “abolished”.
Charges
The notice party was charged with three offences. The allegations were:
(1) That on a date unknown between the 1st September, 1970 and the 31st December, 1970 at St. Jarlath’s College, Tuam, Co. Galway, he indecently assaulted one P.D.
(2) That on a date unknown between the 1st September, 1970 and the 30th June, 1971 at the same location, he did indecently assault one C.D.
(3) That on a date unknown between 1st September, 1970 and 31st December, 1970 at the same location he did commit buggery with one P.D.
This case relates entirely to the third charge and neither the respondent nor the notice party has ever raised any difficulty with the prosecution of the first two.
History of Criminal Proceedings
This account is taken wholly from the prosecution evidence in the affidavit grounding this application.
On the 20th June, 2007, about thirty-six to thirty-seven years after the date of the alleged offence, the notice party was arrested and charged with the offences set out above. They all related to a time when the notice party was teaching at a school in Galway.
When the matter came before the District Court in Castlebar on the 20th June, 2007, a garda gave evidence of arrest, charge and caution. The notice party was represented by his solicitor, Ms. Fiona McAllister. The respondent, who was the District Judge presiding at the hearing, raised the question of jurisdiction. The prosecuting Garda Inspector, Inspector Murray, informed her that the D.P.P., who was the moving party in the proceedings, had elected for trial on indictment and he asked for an adjournment in order to allow a Book of Evidence to be prepared. An independent surety was accepted as a bailsperson and the matter was adjourned to the 18th July, 2007.
On the 18th July, the matter came before the respondent again at Castlebar District Court. The book of evidence was served on the defendant, the notice party in these proceedings, in court. The Inspector then called a sergeant Carroll to give evidence of service which he did. Inspector Murray told the Court that the D.P.P. had directed that the matter be tried on indictment pursuant to s.4(A)(2) of the Criminal Procedure Act 1967. The District Judge asked him what his application was. He replied that his application was that the notice party be returned for trial to the current sittings of the Central Criminal Court in Dublin. The District Judge pointed out that the matter was not properly returnable to the Central Criminal Court but rather to the Circuit Criminal Court. The Inspector was then given some time to research the matter and the District Judge said that she would research the matter as well.
According to Inspector Murray he then took advice from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions which confirmed that the matter should be brought before the Circuit Criminal Court and not the Central Criminal Court. The D.P.P. also brought to his attention that an issue might arise as to whether the indecent assault charge should not have been brought “contrary to Common Law” instead of “contrary to s.62 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861”, as originally drafted. He said they were studying a recent High Court judgment on the topic and directed that Inspector Murray apply to adjourn the case until further instructions could be obtained. Subsequently, the Inspector returned to Court and told the Judge that he was conceding that the matter should be returned to the Circuit Criminal Court and not the Central Criminal Court. The District Judge was unhappy that the prosecution had been incorrect on this issue. He then asked for an adjournment, giving the reason which had been outlined to him by the D.P.P.’s office. Ms. McAllister, solicitor for the notice party, objected to the application and pointed out that the State had included the existing charges in the Book of Evidence and that the notice party should be sent forward on those charges.
The District Judge then intervened and said that she had been researching the points raised and that she had identified a further complication. She pointed out that s.14 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993 had repealed both s.61 and s.62 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861. The offence of buggery contrary to s.61 had been charged. She put the matter back until after the luncheon adjournment so that the State could research it further.
When the Court resumed the Inspector said that he had again been in touch with the D.P.P.’s office and was renewing his application to have the matter adjourned to September. Ms. McAllister objected. The District Judge indicated that she would not accede to the application. The Inspector said that if the District Judge was refusing his application, he would then ask her to return the notice party for trial to the next sitting of the Castlebar Circuit Court. The notice party’s solicitor had no objection to this.
The learned District Judge then said that they were both missing the point. She repeated that s.14 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993 had repealed both s.61 and s.62 of the Act of 1861. She further said that s.8 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, 2006 had now repealed s.14 of the Act of 1993. She said the effect of all this was that all references to buggery had been repealed from the statute books save for a reference, irrelevant to the present case, in the definition of “sexual act” in the Act of 2006.
All that the learned District Judge said, summarised above, transpires to be accurate.
The Inspector then informed the Court that he had been informed by the D.P.P.’s office that s.27 of the Interpretation Act 2005 made it clear that even if a statutory offence had been repealed, that fact does not mean that a person could not be charged with it.
The learned District Judge indicated that she believed this to be wrong. She said it could not be the case. She then asked him to comment further on the legislation and the Inspector indicated that he did not have it with him and that he would need time to study the Acts to which he had referred in order to comment on it in any constructive manner.
The learned District Judge stated that she would make “No Order” in the case.
It thus appears that, at the end of the July, 2007 sitting of the Court, the prosecution had been stymied when the learned District Judge simply marked the case “No Order”. This is the correct order for a judge of the District Court to make when he or she has no jurisdiction to make any other order in the case.
Second Arrest
By direction of the D.P.P. the notice party was again arrested and charged on the 19th September, 2007 with the same offences but with some important differences in their legal formulation. He was charged in effect with:
(1) Buggery contrary to s.61 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861,
(2) Indecent assault contrary to Common Law,
(3) Indecent assault contrary to Common Law.
This matter came before the District Court again on the same day and the Inspector was again prosecuting and Ms. McAllister, solicitor, again represented the notice party.
According to the Inspector’s affidavit, he called a member of the gardaí to give evidence of arrest, charge and caution. Before anything else happened, the learned District Judge asked if these charges were correctly founded in law. The Inspector referred to what had happened on the previous occasion. He said that the charges now before the Court were valid and that they had been directed by the D.P.P. He said that they were being brought as a result of the D.P.P.’s most recent instructions. He handed in to court a copy of s.27 of the Interpretation Act, 2005. The learned District Judge asked Ms. McAllister what she thought. Ms. McAllister said that the D.P.P had already brought the charges the result of which was that the learned District Judge had made no order and that the D.P.P. was now coming again with substantially the same charges despite the District Judge’s earlier decision.
The District Judge asked how she was to know whether the charges were correct in law or not. The Inspector relied on the Interpretation Act 2005. The learned District Judge queried then why the matter had been brought before the Court on the day appointed for the Annual Licensing District Court. The Inspector said that the D.P.P. had issued his instructions in early September and the matter could have been brought before an earlier court but the notice party had been ill.
The learned District Judge then adjourned for an hour to consider the matter and took possession of the various authorities handed to her.
When the learned District Judge came to deal with the matter again she said that it was her decision to make “No Order” in the case. She was not satisfied that the charges before her were good or were grounded in law. She said no argument had been opened to suggest to her that the charges were good. She said that one of the cases given to her,
Goulding v. Judge McVeigh and the D.P.P., an unreported decision of the High Court, was the relevant authority.
Accordingly, the result of the second appearance before the District Court in September, 2007, was again that the learned District Judge made no order. It is clear from what was attributed to the learned District Judge in the State’s affidavit that her grounds for this was that the offence of buggery had been repealed (in unusually trenchant terms, as will transpire), by the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993 and that she did not accept that the Notice Party could now be charged with this offence, alleged to have taken place before the repeal.
High Court Proceedings
On the 19th November, 2007, the High Court granted leave to the D.P.P. to apply for:
1) An Order of certiorari quashing the decision made by the learned District Judge on the 19th September, 2007 to make no order in respect of the three charge sheets against the notice party.
(2) An Order of mandamus requiring the District Judge to accept the evidence of arrest charge and caution that was given on the 19th September, 2007, and to proceed to deal with the charges in the ordinary way.
(3) A declaration that the offence of buggery contrary to s.61 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 is a valid offence recognised by law, if it relates to dates prior to the repeal of the said s.61 of the Act of 1861, which occurred in 2003.
(4) If necessary a declaration that the offence of indecent assault contrary to Common Law is a valid offence recognised by law.
(5) If necessary an Order of certiorari quashing the decision made by the District Judge on the 18th July, 2007, to make no order.
For practical purposes, the relief set out at paragraphs 1 and 3 are those to which the great bulk of the argument before the Court was directed.
The grounds on which this relief was sought are:
(1) That the learned District Judge erred in law in holding that the offence of buggery contrary to s.61 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861 is not known to law or is not properly before the Court in the circumstances of the present case.
(2) The learned District Judge wrongfully declined to exercise her jurisdiction by failing to hear and deal with the charges which were properly and lawfully before her, and to send the notice party forward for trial.
(3) The learned District Judge acted without any proper legal basis and in excess of jurisdiction in making “No Order”.
(4) The learned District Justice erred in law and wrongfully refused jurisdiction in hearing evidence of arrest charge and caution and later purported to hold that she was then not accepting the evidence of arrest charge and caution.
By way of response the notice party claims that the offence of buggery is a Common Law offence, the penalty for which was provided by statute. He then says that this Common Law offence of buggery was repealed by s.14 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993.
It is further claimed by the notice party that the said Act of 1993 did not provide any saver or transitional provision providing for the prosecution of offences repealed by it after the date of the repeal. He further alleged that the allegedly wrongful acts on his part are not now an offence in Irish law. Therefore, any prosecution of him for this offence now is a nullity. He could have been prosecuted for buggery before 1993, but the D.P.P. did not do so then.
By way of reply to the State’s reliance on s.27 of the Interpretation Act 2005, the notice party says that this section of the statute and its predecessor in the Interpretation Act 1937, are not applicable to offences contrary to Common Law. He further says that s.1(1) of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act 1997, which applies where the offence abolished is a Common Law offence, applies only prospectively and it is not applicable in retrospect. He claimed that the learned District Judge was acting within her powers and correctly in making no order in respect of the buggery charge.
Decision of the High Court.
The D.P.P.’s application was heard in the High Court by Mr. Justice O’Keefe, who delivered judgment on the 2nd December, 2009. This Court acceded to the D.P.P’s application, held that buggery was a statutory offence, and quashed the learned District Judge’s order of the 19th September, 2007. From this decision the notice party now appeals.
Legal Context
It is first necessary to put the foregoing events in their statutory and legal context.
Statutory Context
It is alleged that the notice party, the defendant in the criminal proceedings, committed the act of buggery between the 1st September, 1970 and the 30th June, 1971. The parties are in agreement that, between those dates, buggery was an offence. I conclude, for reasons indicated below, that it was an offence contrary to Common Law the penalty for which was fixed by statute, s.61 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861. It was not a statutory offence.
The offence of buggery at Common Law was subsequently abolished by s.2 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993 (“the Act of 1993”) with effect from the 7th July, 1993. Section 2 of that Act provides as follows:
“… any rule of law by virtue of which buggery between persons is an offence is hereby abolished”.
Section 14 of the same Act also repealed sections 61 and 62 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 (“the Act of 1861”) save insofar as they apply to buggery or attempted buggery with animals. This offence had not been abolished: the abolition was only in relation to buggery “between persons”. Section 61 of the Act of 1861 had provided that the penalty for the “abominable crime of buggery” was penal servitude for life or a term of imprisonment not exceeding ten years.
Crucially, the Act of 1993 contained no transitional provisions providing for the institution or maintenance of proceedings in respect of an act committed before the offence of buggery was abolished. This absence of any transitional provisions was an extraordinary omission and created a lacuna in the law. It is by no means the first example of unfortunate omissions in draftmanship apparently based on the illusion that criminal law is fundamentally simple and that the intention may be taken for the deed. This is a grave error. The language of the 1993 Act is quite consistent with buggery being an offence at Common Law. But the language of s. 2, referring to “any rule of law”… would be quite redundant if it were a statutory offence, and the statutory provision creating it were being separated repealed by s. 14.
It should be noted, for context, that the Act of 1993 followed certain decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, being Dudgeon v. The United Kingdom (1981) 4 EHRR 149 and
Norris v. Ireland (1988) 13 EHRR 186. The effect of these was to find the legal provisions criminalising buggery inconsistent with the European Convention on Human Rights. This may account for the trenchant language of the repeal which, apart from repealing the relevant sections of the statute, provided for the abolition of “any rule of law by virtue of which buggery between persons is an offence”. Having regard to the terms of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, it may be that the Oireachtas was concerned that, notwithstanding the decisions of the High Court and Supreme Court in Norris v. The Attorney General I.R. 36 any law criminalising buggery between consenting adults would be constitutionally vulnerable. But the repeal, as can be seen, extended not only to buggery between consenting adults, whether homosexual or heterosexual (which had previously been criminal), but also extended to buggery with minors. Buggery of any kind between persons ceased to be a criminal offence, just as buggery of any kind had previously been a criminal offence, without distinctions of age, sex, consent, or status. This left an enormous lacuna, as the legislature did not seem to notice that they had abolished the offence of buggery between and adult and a child as well as between adults.
On the 4th November, 1997, a belated effort was made to remedy this lacuna. This was the enactment of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997 (“the Act of 1997”) which entered into force on that date.
The Act of 1997 does not deal in specific terms with buggery or with any other offence: rather s.1 (set out below) contains transitional provisions of an entirely general, entirely non-specific, nature in respect of the statutory repeal of Common Law offences generally and provides that the abolition of a Common Law offence does not prevent the bringing of charges in respect of conduct committed prior to its abolition. At subsection (4) there is a general saver intended to prevent “conflict with the constitutional rights of any person”. It does not specifically address the difficulty that some Common Law offences may have been abolished because they are, or are thought to be, unconstitutional or a breach of the State’s international obligations.
The High Court Judgment and Later Developments
When the matter came before the High Court by way of judicial review, Mr. Justice O’Keeffe held that buggery was a statutory offence and that it was therefore possible to prosecute the applicant pursuant to s.27 of the Interpretation Act 2005.
However, during the argument on the hearing of this appeal it was apparently accepted by both sides that the offence of buggery was a Common Law offence. At one point the State submitted that Buggery had, perhaps been both a common law and a statutory offence.
The alternative view of the offence of buggery is that it is a statutory offence by reason of s.61 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861. This provides:
“Whosoever shall be convicted of the abominable crime of buggery, committed either with mankind or with any animal, shall be liable to be kept in penal servitude for life.
It will be observed that this form of words does not attempt to define particular acts and to criminalise them. Instead it refers to the “abominable” crime of buggery as something as already exists and lays down a maximum penalty for it. A previous statute of the former U.K. Parliament, 9 George IV Cap.31, “An act for consolidating and amending the statutes in England relative to Offences against the Persons” in s.15 stated that:
“Every person convicted of the abominable crime of buggery committed with either mankind or with any animal, shall suffer death as a felon”
It will be observed that this Act, too, proceeded on the basis that the offence already existed and merely laid down a penalty. The Act of 1861 strikes us today as a statute of remarkable severity, and as being quite strident in its terms, but of course it was in its day a reforming statute which at least relieved those prone to buggery of the prospect of the death penalty.
By a further statute, also passed in 1861, 24 and 25 Vict. Cap. 54, the Act of 1829 mentioned above was repealed in its entirety.
I do not consider it necessary, for the purpose of this judgment, to emulate the impressive historical analysis conducted by Fennelly J. in his judgment in this case in its entirety. This analysis is of the greatest interest and is revealing in itself but it does not alter my opinion as to whether buggery, as it existed prior to 1993, was a Common Law or a statutory offence. If, in 1993 it was a statutory offence this could only be so by reason of the provisions of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861, quoted above. Other earlier statutes had repealed the pre-existing law, contained in the 1829 Act. The older preceding statute, of 1562, V Eliz. Cap. 17, “An act for the punishment of the vice of sodomy” had been previously been repealed by an Act of 1829. I therefore consider it quite sufficient, for any practical purpose, to pose the question whether the offence of buggery, as it stood in 1993, was a statutory offence created by s.61 of the Act of 1861, or, the alternative, was a Common Law offence.
Historical observation.
But, in deference to the elaborate historical analysis conducted by Fennelly J. in his judgment in this case, I venture a brief comment. There is no doubt that the offence of buggery was the subject of statutory intervention, both in this country and in England, from a remote date. That fact in itself does not render the offence a statutory one, since, for example, the offence of murder has been the subject of various statutory interventions which do not, however, take from the fact that the crime of murder is indisputably a Common Law offence.
The post medieval statutory interventions on the topic of buggery appear to go back, in England, to the year 1553, and in Ireland to 1634. Prior to 1533 the offence of buggery was considered an “offence against religion” and was accordingly an offence triable in the Ecclesiastical Courts. It must be remembered that, at that remote date and to some extent as late as the middle of the 19th century, the Ecclesiastical Courts had a large jurisdiction over matters which are now considered appropriate to the Common Law courts. From the point of view of a defendant in a criminal case there was a very practical aspect to the distinction: the Ecclesiastical Courts could award sentences up to and including life imprisonment, but could not impose the death penalty. A person claiming that he should be tried in the Church Courts was said to “plead his clergy” or to seek “benefit of clergy”, by asserting that he was a cleric.
Accordingly, the older legal history books including Stephens History of the Criminal Law (1883) and Pollock and Maitland (1911) History of English Law consider the offence of buggery under the heading of “Offences against Religion/Ecclesiastical offences”.
These works describe how, over a significant period of time, many crimes (but not the jurisdiction over what we would now call family law and probate, for instance) were removed from the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts. It appears that this happened in the case of the offence of buggery: in 1533 in England and in 1634 in Ireland, statutes were passed by the predecessors of the old United Parliament which do not define the crime of buggery, but which assimilate it to felony at Common Law in terms of procedure and penalty, and make it a felony without benefit of clergy.
This proposition is to my mind clear from what is said in Stephens monumental work, published in 1883:
“The whole of the Ecclesiastical ordinary jurisdiction did not fall at once, nor did it all remain untouched until the year 1640. It was always a recognised principle of law that the Ecclesiastical Courts should not try men for temporal offences and that if they did so they might be restrained by a writ of prohibition. As some of the crimes with which they concern themselves came to be regarded as temporal offences of importance, they were made felonies by statute, and thus the Ecclesiastical Courts lost jurisdiction over them. This was the case with several offences.”
This proposition is, in my opinion, amply and sufficiently illustrated by the terms of the first Irish Act about buggery, 10 Chas. I, Cap 20, entitled “An act for the punishment of the vice of buggery”.
Insofar as relevant this provided:
“FORASMUCH as there is not yet sufficient and condigne punishment appointed … for the detestable and abominable vice of buggery committed with mankind or beast… be it enacted… that the same offence be from henceforth adjudged felonie, and such order and form of process therein to be used against the offenders, as in cases of felony at the Common Law; and that the offenders being thereof convicted… shall suffer such paines of death and loss and penalties of their goods, chattels, debts, lands, tenements and hereditaments, as felons be accustomed to doe, according to the order of the Common Law of this realme, and that no person offending in any such offence shall be admitted to his clergy…”. (Emphasis added)
This Act, which was itself repealed in 1829 by an Act later itself repealed in 1861, does not create an offence of buggery but appoints a penalty and form of procedure in respect of such offence. In this regard the Section is identical to the statutory treatment of the offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, which is undoubtedly a Common Law offence for the reasons set out later in this judgment.
Moreover, it can be seen that the removal of the ancient right of “benefit of clergy” wholly displaced the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts. As to ordinary people it was displaced in any event by making the procedure for its prosecution analogous to that used in the case of “felony at the Common Law”. In the case of clerics it was removed by the abolition of the right to “plead his clergy”, i.e. to assert that he was a clerk in holy orders and entitled therefore to be tried by the Ecclesiastical Courts. Nor was this a mere technicality, as witness the case of the Irish Anglican bishop John Atherton, hanged in Dublin for buggery in the year 1640, only six years after the Act was passed: he could prior to 1634 have escaped execution by asserting benefit of clergy. See Peter Marshal, Mother Leaky and the Bishop (Oxford University Press, 2007) for a comprehensive academic (but eminently readable) account of this interesting and instructive episode. It appears that the Bishop was taxed with buggery only after a falling out with some powerful interests over land in his diocese of Lismore (Waterford).
The need to decide the issue of Statutory or Common Law.
It is fair to say that this issue would normally be one of academic interest only. However, in the circumstances of the present case it is a question the Court is bound to ask. This is because, if the offence of buggery committed prior to 1993 is now prosecutable at all, it is prosecutable for one of two quite different reasons, depending whether the offence is statutory or a Common Law one. As mentioned above, the Act of 1993 contains no transitional provisions whatever. Therefore, if buggery is a Common Law offence, it is prosecutable now, if at all, by virtue of the provisions of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, to whose applicability most of this judgment is devoted. But if it is a statutory offence it is prosecutable, if at all, by reference to those provisions of the Interpretation Acts, 1937 and 2005 upon which the Director relies. The terms of these two statutes are quite different. Accordingly, the Statutory Scheme itself compels an answer to the question: is the offence a statutory offence or an offence of Common Law?
Authority is not lacking on either side of this proposition. The modern United Kingdom authorities are not helpful because, in that jurisdiction, buggery has undoubtedly been a statutory offence at least since 1956. Reflecting this, the 1962 edition of Archbold’s Criminal Pleading Evidence and Practice suggests that an indictment for the offence should be laid in the following form:
“AB on the day of in the County of committed buggery with JN”.
In a footnote to this it is stated:
“It is submitted that since the coming into force of the Sexual Offences Act, 1956, this is the most convenient method of stating this offence in an indictment. As, however, buggery has always been a felony at Common Law, there would probably be no objection to stating the offence simply as ‘buggery’ without reference to any statute”. (Emphasis added)
This is consistent with, though not conclusive of, the position in Ireland. In Mr. Justice Charlton’s book on Offences against the Person, at p.296 it states that:
“Buggery is a felony at Common Law, the penalty for which was fixed by s.61 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861”.
I respectfully agree with this dictum which cites in a footnote a statement to the same effect in O Síochán, The Criminal Law of Ireland, 6th Edition (1977).
I do not regard the case of Norris v. The Attorney General [1984] IR 36 as authority for the contrary proposition. In that case, the plaintiff sought a declaration that the provisions of s.61 and 62 of the Act of 1861 were inconsistent with the Constitution of Ireland and had not been continued in force by Article 50. He did this apparently, on the supposition that it was these Sections which criminalised buggery – see the judgment of O’Higgins C.J. at p.51. It appears to me that both the High Court and the Supreme Court judgments proceeded on that supposition, because that is the way the case was pleaded.
McWilliam J. in the High Court referred to the statute of 1634, which is discussed in this judgment and concluded that:
“Whether there was such an offence at Common Law in Ireland prior to the enactment of 10 Chas. I Cap. 20, or not I do not know. The opening passage of the statute with a reference to ‘the vice’ suggests that there was not, whereas the absence of any indication of the Acts required to constitute the offence suggests that there was.”
I regard this case as inconclusive at best, considered as an authority on the question of whether the offence of buggery was one contrary to statute or one contrary to Common Law.
A Precedent
Moreover, the wording of s.61 is for practical purposes indistinguishable from the wording of other provisions of the same statute, e.g. s.47, which relate to the offence of common assault and of various forms of aggravated assault. That is to say these offences are not expressly created by the statute but a penalty is provided for them. But these offences have always been regarded as offences at Common Law and that was confirmed by this Court in its decision in DPP v. Grealis, cited below. Moreover, it is plain from the report in that case that the offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, to which s.47 relates, was not simply found by the Court to be a Common Law offence but had previously been described as such by the legislature in the statute bringing about its abolition.
We have seen, above, that the Notice Party in this case is charged with two counts of indecent assault. This is described by the Director of Public Prosecutions as being an offence contrary to Common Law and is described in the charges brought by the Director in this very case. Nevertheless, the offence of indecent assault is the subject of s.52 of the Act of 1861 and is in terms virtually indistinguishable from s.61, which relates to buggery. This Section, insofar as relevant, reads as follows:
“Whosoever shall be convicted of any indecent assault upon any female… shall be liable at the discretion of the Court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.”
Since the offence of indecent assault is concededly an offence at Common Law, it appears to me perverse to argue that the offence of buggery, in relation to which the very previous Section of the same statute is in indistinguishable terms, is other than an offence at Common Law.
Accordingly it appears to me that if one is to construe the words of the statute in their ordinary and natural meaning, and consistently with the way in which indistinguishable Sections have been authoritatively construed, and to follow Grealis, one must necessarily regard the offence of buggery as an offence at Common Law and not a statutory offence.
On the hearing of this appeal the Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions advanced the proposition that the offence was perhaps both an offence at Common Law and a statutory offence. I am of the view that the offence, like other offences, must be one or other of these things, and not both. The statutory scheme created by the Oireachtas for the prosecution of the offence of buggery after it has been repealed or abolished itself distinguishes sharply between offences at Common Law and statutory offences. This statutory framework lays down a distinction between the two which the Courts must accept and which would be redundant if it were possible for an offence to maintain a dual existence in both categories.
Consequences of the Foregoing Finding.
Accordingly, the question arises as to whether the notice party can now be prosecuted in respect of the alleged offence. It appears that if this Common Law offence is prosecutable at all, this is by reason of Section 1(2) of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act 1997 (“the Act of 1997”).
A tabular summary of the foregoing position may be set out as follows:
1970 – 1993 Buggery is a Common Law offence-
Notice Party vulnerable to prosecution.
1993 – 1997 Common Law offence of buggery abolished by statute. The absence of any transitional provisions created a lacuna in the law.
Notice Party cannot be prosecuted.
1997- Present Interpretation (Amendment) Act 1997 seeks to remedy this lacuna –
Is the Notice Party once again vulnerable to prosecution?
The Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997
Section 1 of this Act provides, in so far as is relevant, as follows:-
“(2) Where an Act of the Oireachtas… repeals an offence which is an offence at Common Law, then unless the contrary intention appears, any proceedings in respect of any such offence… committed before such… repeal of any such offence at Common Law may be instituted, continued or enforced and any penalty, forfeiture or punishment in respect of any such offence at Common Law… may be imposed and carried out as if such offence at Common Law had not been… repealed.
(3) This section applies to an offence which is an offence at Common Law abolished, abrogated or otherwise repealed before or after the passing of this Act.
(4) If, because of any or all of its provisions, this section would, but for the provisions of this subsection, conflict with the constitutional rights of any person, the provisions of this section shall be subject to such limitations as are necessary to secure that they do not so conflict, but shall otherwise be of full force and effect”. (Emphasis added)
The state appears to have a logical difficulty in relying on this section in the present case. It applies to offences at common law and the notice party has not been charged with such an offence, but with an alleged statutory offence, contrary to s. 61 of the Act of 1861.
Grealis v. D.P.P.
The Supreme Court considered the scope of the Act of 1997 in Grealis v. Director of Public Prosecutions [2001] 3 IR 144. This case is not of binding effect to the present one, as the criminal proceedings in Grealis were instituted before the Act of 1997 came into force. But there are aspects of the case which are of relevance to a consideration of the nature and effect of the Act of 1997. The Grealis case concerned, in part, an offence contrary to s.47 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861. This provided as follows:
“Whosoever shall be convicted upon an indictment of any assault occasioning actual bodily harm, shall be liable, at the discretion of the Court, to be kept in penal servitude for a term of three years or to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years…”.
One hundred and thirty-six years later, the Non-Fatal Offences against the Person Act, 1997, by s.28(1) provided:
“The following Common Law offences are hereby abolished –
(a) Assault and battery,
(b) Assault occasioning actual bodily harm,
(c) Kidnapping and
(d) False imprisonment.” (Emphasis added)
Against that statutory background this Court held that the offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm was a Common Law offence, the statute merely providing the penalty. It is clear from the wording of the Act of 1997, quoted above, that the Oireachtas were also of the view that the offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm was a Common Law offence because the legislatures so described it in the Non-Fatal Offences against the Person Act.
On the hearing of this appeal it was strongly argued by the applicant that, having regard to the structural similarity of s.61 of the Offence against the Person Act, 1861 with s.47 of the same Act that, by parity of reasoning, the offence created by s.61 must likewise be regarded as a Common Law offence.
The applicant in Grealis was alleged to have committed acts of assault contrary to the Common Law on the 4th and 11th May, 1997. The Non-Fatal Offences against the Person Act came into force on the 19th August, 1997. As mentioned above, this statute abolished what it described as the Common Law offence of assault and provided for the creation of new statutory offences. However, just like the Act of 1993, the Non-Fatal Offences against the Person Act 1997 failed to provide any transitional provisions in respect of any Common Law offence alleged to have been committed prior to its coming into force. In September, 1997, prior to the introduction of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act 1997, proceedings were initiated against Mr. Grealis in respect of the alleged assaults, said to have occurred in May, 1997.
The Supreme Court found that no proceedings in respect of the alleged assaults could be instituted against the applicant after the 19th August 1997, when the Common Law offences ceased to exist, without any specific transitional provisions being provided. The Court allowed the appeal of the state against the finding of the High Court that the Act of 1997 was unconstitutional, subject to the determination that the Act applied prospectively only.
In legal terms, the significant difference between Grealis and the instant case is the date on which the prosecution against the accused was initiated. In both cases the alleged acts were offences against the Common Law when committed, but the relevant Common Law offences, assault and buggery respectively, were subsequently abolished by statute. In Grealis the prosecution was initiated prior to the introduction of the Act of 1997 on 4th November, 1997 and so could not be maintained. In the instant case the prosecution was initiated after its introduction. Does that make a significant difference?
In my judgment in Grealis I said (at p. 200):-
“It may be desirable to point out that this judgment does not address the position of allegations of assault occasioning actual bodily harm which have taken place before the operation of the repealing provision of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997 in respect of which a prosecution was initiated after the coming into operation of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997. Such a prosecution would not appear to be affected by the prohibition of retroactive penal legislation contained in Article 15.5 of the Constitution since assault occasioning actual bodily harm was a criminal offence at the material time. Whether the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, would operate to allow such a prosecution having regard to the repeal, and to the provisions of the Act intended to preserve the constitutional rights of persons, is something which will have to be decided in another case on whose facts the issue is properly raised”.
This is that “other case” on whose facts the issue is properly raised. That fact should in itself be a warning to draftsmen of legislation intended to apply to criminal matters that, given a little time, almost every conceivable factual situation will occur, and very likely much sooner than one would think. This prospect should be considered when the Act is being first drafted, and not merely when an emergency later arises, sometimes leading to botched repair jobs.
Had the Act of 1993 contained a specific saver provision in similar terms to the general saver provision eventually provided in the Act of 1997, it is clear that a prosecution against the notice party could have been instituted. As Keane C.J. noted in Grealis, at p. 155:-
“… it is perfectly competent for the legislature to provide in the repealing statute that it is not to affect crimes alleged to have been committed before it was enacted.” (Emphasis added)
But this was not done.
Equally, had the offence of buggery been abolished after the Act of 1997 came into force there would be no difficulty in instituting a prosecution against the notice party. This is because the right to prosecute the offence would simply have been continued, as opposed to allegedly revived.
This distinction has also been found significant in the U.S. and Canadian cases considered below.
The Net Question
In light of the foregoing, the question which now arises is whether section 1 of the Act of 1997 applies in the present case so as to revive the ability to prosecute the notice party for buggery. This issue is not said to arise at all in relation to the charges of indecent assault which, subject to changes in nomenclature, has subsisted as an offence at least since 1861.
It is necessary again to note the very downright terms in which the Act of 1993 repealed any prohibition on buggery. It will be recalled that the measure provided as follows, at section 2:
“… any rule of law by virtue of which buggery between persons is an offence is hereby abolished”.
This could not be clearer: buggery between persons, on the passage of the Act of 1993, ceased to be an offence. The statute providing the penalty was expressly repealed by the Act and the phrase “any rule of law” is quite broad enough to encompass any Common Law offence. As a matter of history, there is no doubt that buggery had been an offence at Common Law since time immemorial. But times change.
It is a general rule of statutory construction that, presumptively, statutes operate prospectively and not retrospectively. This must be distinguished from the cognate but distinct rule, now given constitutional force by Article 15.5 of the Constitution, that a person cannot be prosecuted for an action which was not an offence in law at the time of its commission.
The effect of the Act of 1993, then, was to end the status of buggery between persons as an offence. The Act of 1993 was quite simply phrased in this regard and contained no provision whatever in respect of offences of buggery which had been committed prior to its enactment but had not then been prosecuted. That is, it contained no transitional provision at all.
When this position at last came to be addressed by the Oireachtas in the Act of 1997, the measure was couched in general terms. It did not, therefore, interfere with the position whereby buggery was no longer an offence. But it provided at s. 1(2) that:
“… any proceedings in respect of any such offence… committed before such… repeal of any such offence at Common Law may be instituted, continued or enforced… as if such offence at Common Law had not been… repealed”.
This, frankly, is the sort of legislative provision which exposes the law to ridicule. Buggery between persons has been abolished as an offence. To be precise, “any rule of law” whereby it was an offence has been “abolished”. But, it seems from s.1(2) of the Act of 1997, that a prosecution for such an offence may be instituted “as if” the “rule of law whereby buggery between persons is an offence” had not been abolished. In fact it had been abolished, but the defendant is, according to the State, exposed to the risk of life imprisonment on a statutory hypothesis (“as if”) that this had never taken place.
This counter-factual condition can only be met on the basis of attributing to the Oireachtas a power to create a criminal liability in the very vaguest and most unspecific language. So startling an attribution calls to mind the method of construction denounced in a memorable judgment by the great Welsh Judge, Lord Atkin, in Liversidge v. Anderson [1942] AC 206.
But the extraordinary features of the Act of 1997 do not end there. The provisions of the last subsection of that section will be recalled:
“If, because of any or all of its provisions, this section would, but for the provisions of this subsection, conflict with the constitutional rights of any person, the provisions of this section shall be subject to such limitations as are necessary to secure that they do not so conflict, but shall otherwise be of full force and effect”.
This section is of a complexity and, more important, of a degree of uncertainty, which would baffle even the most enthusiastic or concerned of readers. The combined effect of subsection (1) and (4) would appear to be as follows: since buggery was a Common Law offence by virtue of a “rule of law” which has been “abolished” in 1993, a prosecution for it may be instituted and maintained, at any time after 1997, only by virtue of section 1 of the Act and notwithstanding the unaffected “abolition” of the rule whereby buggery between persons is an offence. But this shall not be so if it would “conflict with the constitutional right of any person” in which case the section shall not apply so as to cause such conflict but shall otherwise “be of full force and effect”.
It appears to me that this is a state of the law which makes absolute nonsense of the presumption that every citizen is presumed to know the law. A citizen of ordinary intelligence who consults the statute book will learn, in language which everyone can understand, that any rule of law “by virtue of which buggery between persons is an offence” was “abolished” in 1993. But that is the last clarity he will encounter. If he is lucky enough to chance upon the Act of 1997, which makes no express reference to buggery, he will find, in much more convoluted language, a provision that, notwithstanding the Act of 1993, a prosecution may be initiated for a Common Law offence and not a statutory one, as was actually charged in this case. He may possibly discover (although learned judges have differed on the topic) that buggery is a Common Law offence. Viewed in this light, s.1(2) of the Act of 1997 appears to mean that a prosecution may be initiated for any buggery between persons, whether homosexual or heterosexual, married or single, consenting or otherwise so long as it occurred prior to 1993. But if he persists to read s.1(4) he will learn that this is not in fact so if, but only if, its being so would conflict with anyone’s constitutional rights.
This is a state of considerable obscurity and uncertainty, to say the very least. For example, is a person who committed a consensual Act of buggery with another adult in 1992 now liable to prosecution, or not?
If, to speculate for a moment, it was the intention of the legislators in 1993 to decriminalise only consensual buggery between adult persons, homosexual or heterosexual, and married or single, they could of course have said so. But they did not say so. They said something entirely different: they said that they were decriminalising all buggery between persons. This includes buggery with persons who are minors. This fact, and the later unwillingness to state (if it were the case) that a dreadful mistake had been made in 1993 due to the inadvertence of the draftsman or the legislators has led to the extraordinary vagueness and complexity with which we are now confronted.
Role of the Court
It must be clearly understood that the Court is not entitled simply to form its own view on the extent to which buggery between persons should be a prosecutable offence and somehow read that view into the statute. On the contrary, the Court must regard as irrelevant the fact that its members might consider that no repeal at all, or a less comprehensive repeal than that actually contained in the Act of 1993 would have been a better policy: that is not a matter for the Court but for the legislators. Moreover, the Court must presume that the legislators intended to enact a provision with the content expressed in the ordinary and natural meaning of the words they have in fact enacted. If they now have second thoughts about what was enacted, that is a matter for them and is best cured, if it is desired to cure it, by a new measure in simple and straightforward language.
Authorities
I am not aware of, nor was there cited to us, any authority bearing directly on the question at issue in this case. It was agreed between the parties, however, that the case did not directly implicate the prohibition on retroactive penal legislation contained in Article 15.5 of the Constitution. It was also agreed, if I understood it correctly, that the presumption that a statute operates prospectively only applies to substantive law, and not to matters which are purely procedural.
The closest analogy, in my view, to the facts of the present case, apart from Grealis (cited above) is with the American case of Stogner v. California 539 U.S. 607 (2004). There, two sisters had in 1998 during the course of investigations into child abuse, alleged that their father, Stogner, had abused them between the years 1955 and 1973. At each of those dates, the Californian statute of limitations provided for a three year limitation period. This period had expired twenty-two years prior to the indicting of the appellant. However, political agitation in the mid-1990s led to a statute reviving criminal causes of action barred by the previous statute of limitations. This was referred to as s.803(g). As a result of it, the appellant was charged. He moved to have the prosecution case struck out on the ground that the due process clause and the ex post facto clause in the U.S. Constitution were violated. This latter is Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution which provides that:-
“… no bill of attainder or Ex Post Facto law shall be passed”.
This argument succeeded in the trial court but was reversed by the State Court of Appeal on appeal by the prosecution. But the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari and delivered judgment on the 26th June, 2003. The Court held:-
“A law enacted after the expiration of a previously applicable limitations period violates the ex post facto clause where it is applied to revive a previously time barred prosecution. California’s law extends the time in which the prosecution is allowed, authorises prosecutions that the passage of time has previously barred, and was enacted after prior limitation periods for [Stogner’s] alleged offences had expired.”
This was because:-
“The law at issue here created a new criminal limitations period that extends the time in which prosecution is allowed. It authorised criminal prosecutions that the passage of time had previously barred. Moreover, it was enacted after prior limitation periods for Stogner’s alleged offence had expired. Do these features of the law, taken together, produce the kind of retroactivity that the Constitution probids? We conclude that they do.”
It will be observed first, that the United States Supreme Court regarded an alteration in the limitation period, at least where the time limited had already expired at the time of the alteration, as a substantive, and not a procedural, measure.
Secondly, the Court focussed, quite narrowly, on the period immediately before the passing of the new law extending the period for prosecution. Technically, a large part of the majority judgment turned on an exegesis of the much earlier Supreme Court judgment of Calder v. Bull 3 U.S. 386 (1798). This was a decision of Chief Justice Chase and the Court in Stogner held that what had been done by the Californian legislature in enacting s.803(g) fell within Chase C.J.’s condemnation of “every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was when committed” and fell within the condemnation of laws which “inflict punishments where the party was not, by law, liable to any punishment,” (that is, he was immune immediately prior to the new law).
The judgment of the Court in Stogner was given by Breyer J., with whom Stevens, O’Connor, Souter and Ginsburg JJ. joined. They adopted the language of Chief Justice Chase who held that the ex post facto clause prevented governments from enacting statutes with “manifestly unjust and oppressive” retrospective effects. They also followed Judge Learned Hand who wrote that extending a limitation period after the State has assured “a man that he has become safe from its pursuit… seems to most of us unfair and dishonest” (Falter v. U.S. 23F. 2d 420 upheld in (1928) 277 U.S. 590). In such a case, said the Court, the government has refused ‘to play by its own rules’ (Carmell v. Texas [2000] 529 U.S. 513). The Court held that the offence as it existed prior to 803(g) had been “aggravated” in the sense that, and to the extent that, it inflicted punishment for past criminal conduct that, immediately before the new law was enacted, did not attract any such liability.
Because it clearly influenced the Court in Stogner, and because of the pre-eminence of Judge Learned Hand, I quote the relevant portion from Falter, cited above:-
“The crime was committed in 1919 and 1920, at a time when the period of the statute of limitations was three years. In November, 1921, the proviso was added by which the period was extended to six years in the case ‘offences involving the defrauding or attempts to defraud the United States or any agency thereof, whether by conspiracy or not’. The application of the proviso to the case at bar being clear from its last sentence, the defendants argue that the amendment is ex post facto legislation. Perhaps they would be right if the earlier statute had once run in their favour. But the period had not run, and the argument is, and must be, that any change after the commission of the crime, and while time is still running, is within the constitutional prohibition. It is a little curious that the only case we can discover is Com. v. Duffy, 96 Pa. 506 though there are dicta in accord [elsewhere]. In Mallett v. North Carolina 181 U.S. 589 it was held that the allowance of an appeal to the prosecution was constitutional and Bazell v. Ohio, 269 U.S. 167, laid it down generally that the question was one of degree and depended on whether the result was ‘harsh and oppressive’. Certainly it is one thing to revive a prosecution already dead, and another to give it a longer lease of life. The question turns upon how much violence is done to our instinctive feelings of justice and fair play. For the State to assure a man that he has become safe from its pursuit and thereafter to withdraw its assurance, seems to most of unfair and dishonest. But, while the chase is on, it does not shock us to have extended beyond the time first set, or, if it does, the State forgives it.” (Emphasis added)
On these principles, it would have been quite possible to put a transitional provision into the statute of 1993, which affected the abolition of the Common Law crime of buggery, just as it was permissible in Falter to extend the time “while the time originally limited was still running”. But that was not done, for reasons never explained.
The issue plainly divided the United States Supreme Court quite radically. There was in Stogner an eloquent dissent delivered by Kennedy J. in which Rehnquist C.J., and Scalia and Thomas JJ. joined. A significant part of both the majority and the minority judgments consists of an extremely critical analysis of the other. Kennedy J. also pointed out, at p.653 that 803(g) contained “an additional safeguard for defendants in revived historical prosecutions”:
“It conditions prosecution on a presentation of independent evidence that corroborates the victim’s allegation by clear and convincing evidence”.
In Ireland, of course, all mandatory requirements for corroboration, or for the Judge to give a corroboration warning, have been abolished by statute even in the case of very old offences.
I have observed above that the United States Supreme Court’s opinion is heavily reliant on a focus on the circumstances of the time the new law was passed on the one hand and those prevailing at the time immediately before that on the other. This is a different focus to the alternative one which focuses instead on the time the new law was passed by comparison with the time the offence was allegedly committed. In the American example the “new law” was s.803 (g); here it is the Interpretation (Amendment) Act 1997, passed on the 4th November of that year. The “time immediately prior” focus significantly is that adopted in the Irish Interpretation Act, 1937.
Falter was a case where the time was extended before the statute ran. An attempt to do so after that time, more analogous to the present case, was found in the fairly recent Canadian case of R. v. Ford (1993) 15 O.R. (3d.) 173 (C.A.). There the appellant was charged with a number of counts of prostitution related offences. At the time the alleged offences were committed (1985) the relevant legislation provided a statutory limitation period of one year. A subsequent enactment removed the limitation period with effect from the 1st January, 1988. This change took place after the one year limitation period had expired. The question to be decided was whether the appellant, who could not be prosecuted for the offence because a statutory limitation period had run, could be prosecuted for the same offence if the statutory limitation period that protected him was subsequently repealed.
In the Ontario Court of Appeal, Krever J.A. summarised the issue as follows:
“The appellant was vulnerable to prosecution from November, 1985 to November, 1986. From November, 1986 until January 1, 1988, because of the expiry of the one-year limitation period… he was immune from prosecution for the acts with which we are concerned. Was the effect of the repeal on January 1, 1988, of… the one-year limitation period, that the appellant lost his immunity from prosecution or, to put it another way, that he again became vulnerable to prosecution after January 1, 1988?”
The Court stated that if the prosecution’s position that the accused could now be prosecuted was correct, then:
“… the legal effect of the repeal of the limitation period on January 1, 1988 was to create a criminal liability that did not exist a moment before the enactment of the repeal.” (Emphasis added)
I agree with this conclusion and would apply it in the present circumstances as a matter of Irish Common Law. The result of this is that if the section one of the Act of 1997 permits prosecution for breach of the rule of law whereby buggery between persons was an offence, as and from the 4th November, 1997, then it created a criminal liability which did not exist a moment before its enactment.
The Canadian Court cited the U.S. authority, Corpus Juris Secundum (s. 224) to the effect that “the accused cannot be deprived of a defence which has become complete” and held that:
“… the appellant acquired a freedom from vulnerability to prosecution in respect of the offences in… 1985 – no small acquisition. That which he acquired, without express language to that effect, could not be affected or removed by the repeal in 1988 of the limitation period”.
Both the American and the Canadian cases cited above deal with limitation periods and not with what happened in this case: the more radical “abolition” of the very rule said to constitute the offence, followed by the later conferring of a right to prosecute for the offence subject to certain conditions. But these two situations can be regarded as analogous. The day before the new law was passed, whether it was a law extending a limitation period or a law reviving a right to prosecute for an abolished offence, the defendant was not “vulnerable to prosecution”. At some stage in the following day, in each case, he became so vulnerable. This to my mind is a very strong analogy and makes the American and Canadian cases useful precedents.
Irish Common Law & Constitutional Rights
In the next portions of this judgment, I explore the extent to which the principles which were the foundation in the North American cases cited above find a place in Irish constitutional law. For example, it appears well settled in our law that the presumption that a statute operates prospectively only applies to statutes which make a substantive alteration in the law and not to statutes which are purely procedural in their content. Secondly, I explore the requirements of our law in relation to the creation of a criminal offence and conclude that clear and specific language is necessary for the creation of a criminal liability. I consider that this requirement is of a constitutional nature and rely for this conclusion on the authorities cited below. I conclude from that that it is a constitutional imperative that a statute creating a criminal liability should be clear, certain and specific and that the liability should be expressed without ambiguity. I am also of the view that a statute creating, by revival or otherwise a criminal liability must be such that a citizen in no uncertainty, or be able to find out without undue trouble or research what precisely is criminalised and what is not. This proposition too is based on the authorities cited below.
I conclude that the oblique and vaguely phrased attempt to revive a criminal liability for the offence of buggery committed prior to 1993 fails in all these regards.
Substantive or Procedural?
On the basis of the two authorities just mentioned, neither of which of course are binding on us, and of the cases reviewed in them, I would conclude that in 1993 the notice party acquired an immunity from prosecution in respect of an act committed in 1970 or 1971. If the effect of the Act of 1997 is to remove this immunity and once again make him vulnerable to prosecution, it cannot be said that it is merely procedural in nature. On the contrary, a statute having this effect is a statute creating a new criminal liability which had been “abolished”, by reviving the right of prosecution against the notice party. But there can be no prosecution except for breach of a law, which in this instance is the Common Law against buggery, “abolished” in 1993.
This case was mainly argued by addressing the question of whether the notice party’s constitutional rights would be violated if the cause of action against him were revived. But this question is hypothetical unless the cause of action against him is in fact revived. I propose therefore first to address the question of whether the Act of 1997 is effective to create a criminal liability in a person who, immediately before its enactment, had no such liability because the action he is alleged to have committed had been expressly decriminalised, without qualification, some years before.
Criteria for the Creation of a Criminal Liability.
No action can be considered criminal unless there is a law which constitutes it a criminal offence. This is a fundamental principle of the Common Law, anciently expressed in the maxim nullum crimen sine lege. This principle has been endorsed on innumerable occasions by our courts and is treated as a constitutional value in the 4th edition of J.M. Kelly: The Irish Constitution, Hogan and Whyte eds., (Dublin, 2003). There, at p. 1050 it is said:-
“The principle that no one may be tried or punished except for an offence known to the law is a fundamental element in the Irish and Common Law systems and an essential security against arbitrary prosecution.”
It is also there treated as an incident of trial in due course of law. It is also treated in that way, I believe, in the judgment of my colleague Denham J. (as she then was) in Grealis, quoted below.
Thus viewed, it is hard to reconcile with the concept of a trial for an offence which has been “abolished”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 1993 edition, the term “abolish” comes from the Latin “abolire”, to destroy, and the English meanings given to the word are:-
“Put an end to, annul, demolish, destroy”.
The most recent treatment of the principle, nullum crimen sine lege is to be found in The People (Director of Public Prosecutions) v. Cagney [2008] 2 IR 111. There it is said at pp. 121 to 122:-
“From a legal and constitutional point of view, it is a fundamental value that a citizen should know, or at least be able to find out, with some considerable measure of certainty, what precisely is prohibited and what is lawful”.
Thus, in Attorney-General v. Cunningham [1932] I.R. 28, O’Byrne J. said at p. 32 in the Court of Criminal Appeal:-
“The offence as charged in the indictment is one of maliciously firing into a dwelling-house… and it seems to us that the proper question for our determination is whether that is, at Common Law, an indictable offence. In considering that question the court must have regard to the fundamental doctrine recognised in these Courts that the criminal law must be certain and specific, and that no person is to be punished unless and until he has been convicted of an offence recognised by law as a crime and punishable as such.” (Emphasis added)
Equally, in King v. The Attorney General [1981] I.R. 233, [often referred to as the Vagrancy Act case] Kenny J. said at p.263:-
“It is a fundamental feature of our system of government by law (and not by decree or diktat) that citizens may be convicted only of offences which have been specified with precision by the judges who made the Common Law, or of offences which, created by statute, are expressed without ambiguity… in my opinion both the governing phrases [in the Vagrancy Act] ‘a suspected person’ and ‘reputed thief’ are so uncertain that they cannot form the foundation for a criminal offence.” (Emphasis added)
In D.P.P. v. Flanagan [1979] I.R. 265 at pp. 280 to 281, Henchy J. said:-
“It is, in my view, a cardinal principle in the judicial interpretation of statutes that the range of criminal liability should not be held to have been statutorily extended except by clear, direct and unambiguous words. If the lawmakers wish to trench on personal liberty by extending the range of the criminal law, they may do so, within constitutional limitations; but an intention to do so should not be imputed to them where the statute has not used clear words to that effect. No man should be found guilty of a statutory offence when words of the statute have not plainly indicated that the conduct in question will amount to an offence. The requirement of guilty knowledge for the commission of the offence pre-supposes as much.”
I am concerned about three separate aspects of the basis on which, in the prosecution’s view, the prosecution of the notice party for buggery can be supported.
Prior to 1993 there was but one offence of buggery. It was a Common Law offence and it did not distinguish between homosexual or heterosexual buggery, between buggery with or without consent, or buggery with a person over, as opposed to under, the age of consent. So buggery was a crime tout court, and the fact, for instance, that it was committed consensually between heterosexual married persons of full age, made no difference to that. Specifically, there was no distinction in law between buggery between persons, one of whom was below the age of consent, and a situation where both parties were above the age of consent: all buggery was illegal so these distinctions were irrelevant to the constitution of the offence.
When, in 1993, the offence was “abolished” by s.2 and 14 of the Act of that year, s.3 made specific provision criminalising the offence of buggery with underage persons. But that was a new statutory offence and, in accordance with the principles already mentioned in this judgment, could only operate prospectively and therefore had no relevance to alleged offences of buggery said to have taken place decades earlier. My first concern in this case is as to whether the Common Law offence “abolished” by the Act of 1993 can “form the foundation for” this prosecution at all. It has been abolished, annulled, destroyed, and put an end to, and was in that strongly expressed state of non-existence when the Act of 1997 was passed. It is not clear to me how this latter Act can mandate a prosecution for it when the offence itself no longer exists and no attempt has been made to revive it.
It may however be unnecessary to resolve the foregoing issue. I also have the gravest doubts as to whether s.1(2) of the Act of 1997 is in language sufficiently certain to “form the foundation for a criminal offence”, to borrow once again the phrase of Kenny J. in
King v. The Attorney General, cited above.
If criminal liability for buggery is revived by s.1(2) of the Act of 1997 then it would appear to be revived in its entirety. Section 1(2) speaks merely of “an offence which is an offence at Common Law” and does not refer at all to buggery specifically. Therefore, if its effect is to revive “an offence which was an offence at Common Law” i.e. buggery, it revives it in its original Common Law scope and not in any cut down version. Accordingly, if we are to interpret s.1(2) as reviving the Common Law offence of buggery then it is revived whether committed between man and man, or between man and woman, and even if it is committed with full consent, and even if it is committed between married persons. Is this really intended?
Such a revival would be a truly dramatic development. It would place Ireland in the position where buggery would appear to be revived in all its former terrifying scope and persons whose predilections had been decriminalised following the Dudgeon and Norris cases (cited above) might again be within the scope of the criminal law. In the argument in this case, no attempt was made to suggest that the State would not in practice prosecute such persons, as was done in certain recent litigation in the United Kingdom. Indeed, who could so stipulate?
I would decline to construe s.1(2) of the Act of 1997 as reviving the offence of buggery so as to make it now prosecutable, firstly because to do so would expose to prosecution persons whom there is every reason to believe the legislators intended to exempt. I believe that it could – and I say no more than that – breach both the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights to treat these people as having committed a criminal offence, having regard to the terms of the Dudgeon and Norris decisions. These are persons, homosexual or heterosexual, who engaged in consensual buggery prior to 1993.
To this it may be objected that the State would in practice probably not prosecute anyone for consensual buggery between persons of full age. I do not consider that as proved or as a reason capable of justifying the Supreme Court in reviving an offence which is now unconstitutional.
In any event, the State, on the hearing of this appeal, offered no assurance whatever in this regard.
It may further be objected that the case against the notice party, which gives rise to the present appeal, is not a case of buggery between adults but a case of buggery with a minor. This is a form of conduct which the Oireachtas has always, at any time when it specifically considered the subject, declared to be unlawful.
Under the ordinary rules of standing, this point would have a decisive force. But it appears to me that the ordinary rules of standing do not apply in this case because of the terms of s.1(4) of the Act of 1997. This provides:-
“If, because of any or all of its provisions, this section would, but for the provisions of this subsection, conflict with the constitutional rights of any person, the provision of this section shall be subject to such limitations as are necessary to secure that they do not so conflict, but shall otherwise be of full force and effect”. (Emphasis added)
This subsection appears to require a consideration of the constitutional rights, not merely of the notice party but of “any person” whatsoever. It is for that reason that I feel constrained to consider the rights of all persons who might be affected by the revival of the offence of buggery as it stood prior to 1993.
Secondly, I do not consider the wording of s.1 of the Act of 1997 as clear and specific enough to be the foundation of a criminal liability, having regard to the authorities quoted above and to the values on which they are grounded. I do not consider the words sufficiently “clear direct and unambiguous” to extend the range of criminal liability, to adopt the language of D.P.P. v. Flanagan, above.
Thirdly, I do not accept that the revival of criminal liability in the year 1997 in respect of an offence “abolished” in 1993, is in any way consistent with due process, or that it is capable of giving rise to a trial in due course of law. The American and Canadian cases cited above are suggestive of my reasons for this position. However the most direct authority is the dictum of Denham J. in Grealis, cited above, with which I respectfully agree. I rely in particular on the following passage (at pp. 187 to 188:-
“Section 1, sub-ss. (1), (2) and (3) [of the Act of 1997] are blanket provisions covering prosecutions of prior Common Law offences. Section 1(4) protects individuals from the said law infringing their constitutional rights. Whether it is a sound method of drafting statutes or not, it is the method chosen by the legislature. Thus, the relevant court has a duty under s.1(4) of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, to determine whether the operation of s. 1 sub-s.(1), (2) or (3) conflicts with the constitutional rights of the individuals before the court.
Before the summonses were issued in this case the offences were abolished under the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997. The actions were an offence when they took place. However, after the offence was abolished by an Act which did not provide for any transitional arrangements, the … applicant was in a situation where he was not liable for his actions as being an offence. This situation continued until the purported change in the law effected by the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, on the 4th November, 1997. That Act purported to retrospectively introduce law so as to reintroduce liability for the acts of the… applicant.
Section 1(4) of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, protects the rights of the… applicant. A purported validation retrospectively of the law may be a breach of the Constitution. An application retrospectively of s. 1 of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, would conflict with the… applicant’s constitutional right to be tried for an offence at law, in due process of law, in circumstances where the actions had ceased to be an offence and so remained at the time of the issuing of the summonses. A vacuum was created at which time the actions were no longer an offence under the law. A lacuna was left by the legislature. Any prosecution of the … applicant after the abolition of the offence and prior to the coming into effect of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997, was a nullity. A purported validation retrospectively of the new law would be a breach of the rule of law, due process and fundamental constitutional principles… [The Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997] is an Act which, in accordance with constitutional principles, applies prospectively”. (Emphasis added)
I respectfully agree with these sentiments as applying to the present case although they may possibly have been obiter in the context of Grealis. Here, too, the notice party, as a result of the Act of 1993, “was in a situation where he was not liable for his actions as being an offence”. Here, too, this “situation continued until the purported change in the law effected by the Interpretation (Amendment) Act 1997 on the 4th November, 1997”. I agree also that “that Act purported to retrospectively introduce law so as to reintroduce liability for the acts of the [notice party]”. I further agree that this situation would “conflict with the … [notice party’s] constitutional right to be tried for an offence at law, in due process of law”.
The offence of buggery is not “an offence at law” or an offence known to the law, because any rule of law whereby buggery between persons was an offence has been “abolished” since 1993. The clumsy and rather glib attempt to revive liability for the offence if committed before 1993 appears to me simply to ignore the non-existence of any offence of buggery. A trial at which criminal liability was sought to be imposed in respect of this non-existent offence would not in my view be a trial in due process of law by reason of the striking lack of specificity in s.1 of the 1997 Act. There has simply been a failure to think through the consequences of this form of legislation. Does it revive liability for the offence of buggery in the scope which that offence had prior to 1993? If so, for the reasons set out above, I believe such revival to be an unconstitutionality, and a breach of the State’s international obligations. But if it does not revive the offence in its former scope, what is the scope of the revived liability? I do not believe that that question can be answered on the wording of the statute. What is the meaning of subsection (4), with specific reference to buggery? This seems to me to be entirely imponderable, and incapable of precise answer.
A liability to prosecution as vague as the one allegedly based on s.1) in my view wholly lacks the “foundation of a criminal offence”, to borrow the language of Kenny J. in King v. Attorney General, cited above.
I do not consider that the principal difference between this case and Grealis, the fact that in the latter case the proceedings had been instituted prior to the Act of 1997, is a significant distinction. In each case, the Act is required to operate so as to revive the power to prosecute for an alleged criminal action which the legislature had repealed or “abolished”. I do not think that the revival of a right to prosecute etc. has any legal effect unless the offence is revived; I do not think the wording of subsection of the Act of 1997 is sufficiently “clear and precise” to do this and I do not think that a trial mandated for an offence which was abolished or put to an end is a trial in due course of law.
Points specific to the Present Case
It will be noted that the case put forward by the State on this appeal, with its almost exclusive emphasis on s.1 of the Act of 1997 as the engine permitting prosecution, is at variance with the case advanced against the notice party in the District Court. There, the offence of buggery was charged “contrary to s.61” of the Offences against the Person Act 1861. Since buggery was, prior to its “abolition” a Common Law offence it is plain that the charge in this regard preferred against the notice party cannot stand since s.61 of the Victorian Statute was specifically repealed by s.14 of the Act of 1993. Accordingly, the learned District Justice had before her a charge alleging an offence unknown to the law and I would not interfere with her order on the buggery charge.
As matters developed on the hearing of this appeal, it was argued on the basis that buggery was available as an offence for a reason quite different to that put before the learned District Justice viz. that it was in fact a Common Law offence and was therefore revived by s.1 of the Act of 1997. I would not uphold this contention for the reasons given above. But it is in any event quite inconsistent with the basis on which the prosecution was advanced before the learned District Judge and cannot, in my view, affect the order which she made.
I interpret the effect of the order of the District Court as being that the learned District Judge made “no order” in respect of each of the three charges before her. I would decline to interfere with that order insofar as it related to the charge of buggery.
However, as mentioned above, the Notice Party at no time disputed the technical propriety of the two charges of indecent assault and I would therefore quash the orders of “no order” in respect of each of these charges and remit the matter to the learned District Judge to proceed in accordance with law. It is fair to point out that the Notice Party raised no objection to these charges proceeding in the ordinary way at any time and that no expense in pleading, and no time of the Court, has been devoted to dealing with these charges.
JUDGMENT of Mr. Justice Fennelly delivered the 8th day of February 2012.
1. This case presents an unusual problem arising from the effects of the abolition, by the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, 1993, of the offence of buggery. The Act of 1993 was enacted in response to the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights delivered on 26th October 1988 in Norris v. Ireland (1991) 13 EHRR 186. In that case, the European Court found that the State had violated the rights of the applicant by maintaining in force legislation which made it a criminal offence to commit the act of buggery between consenting adults. The Act of 1993 did not, however, contain any saving provisions in respect of acts of buggery committed prior to the introduction of the Act of 1993 on 7th July 1993.
2. The case comes to the Court by way of appeal from the judgment of the High Court (O’Keeffe J) dated 2nd December 2009 and the order of 17th December 2009 quashing the decision of the learned District Judge, Mary Devins, who had declined to make any order in respect of the prosecution of the above-named notice party/ appellant (hereinafter called “the Appellant”) on charges of buggery and indecent assault.
3. On 19th September 1997 the Appellant was arrested and charged with the following offences:
(i) Buggery contrary to section 61 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861 on a date unknown between 1st September 1970 and 31st December 1970;
(ii) Indecent assault contrary to common law between 1st September and 30th June 1971;
(iii) Indecent assault contrary to common law between 1st September 1970 and 31st December 1970.
4. The Appellant was, at the time, a priest, holding the position of Dean of Studies in a secondary boarding school in the west of Ireland. The alleged victim was then a 13 year old male boarder at the school. The allegation is that the Appellant, under the guise of treating him for pain following sporting activity, invited him to his room, where he caused him to remove his clothes, massaged his genitals and anal area and committed buggery on him. Although similar activity is alleged to have taken place on more than one occasion, there is only one charge of buggery. The Appellant has denied the charges.
5. These matters came on for hearing before the Respondent, District Judge Devins, on 19th September 2007. The learned judge raised with the prosecuting member of An Garda Síochána the question of the validity of the charges, since the laws governing them had, she suggested, been repealed in their entirety. The events at that hearing and at an earlier hearing, where similar charges had been laid, are described in detail in the judgment which has been delivered by Hardiman J. Evidence of arrest and caution was given. After discussion with the prosecuting garda and the solicitor representing the Appellant and, having considered written submissions, the learned judge ruled that she would make no order. She said that she was not satisfied the charges were good or grounded in good law and that no argument had been opened to her to suggest that the charges were good. She said that she was not accepting the evidence of charge and caution which had been given earlier.
6. It is clear that the concern of the learned District Judge was that, in view of the repeal by the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, 1993 of section 61 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861, the charges were not good in law. This repeal did not, however, on any view of the matter, affect the charges of indecent assault. Nonetheless, she declined to make any order in respect of any of the charges. The consequence of her ruling was that the prosecution could not continue.
7. On 19th November, 2007 the High Court granted leave to the applicant (hereinafter “the Director”) to apply for judicial review by way of an order of certiorari quashing the decision of the District Court to make no order in respect of the three charge sheets against the Appellant; and an order of mandamus requiring the Respondent to accept the evidence of arrest, charge and caution that was given on 19th September, 2007 and to proceed to deal with the three charges in the ordinary way.
8. In the High Court, as in this Court, the question of whether the prosecution of the Appellant can be permitted to continue depends on the resolution of two distinct but closely related questions. The first question is whether buggery was a statutory or a common law offence at the time of its abolition in 1993. If it was a statutory offence, it is not in dispute that, by virtue of section 21 of the Interpretation Act, 1937, any person can be prosecuted at any time after the passing of the Act of 1993 for an offence of buggery committed prior to its repeal. In that event, it is unnecessary to consider the consequences which would flow from its having had the character only of a common law offence. If, on the other hand, buggery was, contrary to what was held by the High Court, a crime at common law only, with the penalty being provided by statute, section 21 of the Act of 1937 does not apply. In this event, a second question arises: whether the prosecution can continue by virtue of the effect of section 1 of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act, 1997 which applies saving provisions in the case of the statutory abolition of a common law offence.
9. O’Keeffe J, having considered all the statutory and historical references submitted to the High Court, and following, in particular, the judgment of McWilliam J in the High Court in Norris v. the Attorney General [1984] IR 36, held that the offence of buggery was a statutory offence when it was abolished in 1993 and not an offence at common law only.
10. The Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, 1993 repealed and replaced the existing law relating to buggery. Section 2 provided that “any rule of law by virtue of which buggery between persons is an offence is hereby abolished;” Section 14 repealed the enactments specified in the Schedule, which included sections 61 and 62 of the Offences against the Persons Act, 1861. Thus, the language of the Act was comprehensive enough to cover and to repeal the offence of buggery, as it stood under the existing law, whether it was an offence at common law only or a statutory offence.
11. It should be noted, of course, that the Act of 1993 did not decriminalise buggery in all circumstances. In particular, section 3 of that Act provides for new criminal offences of buggery against persons under the age of 17.
12. It is common case that the repeal of an offence means that, in the absence of saving provisions, no prosecution can be brought for acts committed contrary to the repealed law, whether committed before or after the coming into effect of the repealing statute. Put simply, where a statute merely repeals a statute creating an offence or abolishes an offence at common law, no prosecution can be brought for the commission of that offence irrespective of whether the impugned act was committed before or after the repealing statute. In practice, however, this matter depends on transitional or saving provisions in the relevant Interpretation Acts. Section 21 of the Interpretation Act, 1937 contained saving provisions for the case of the repeal of statutes. Subsection 2 of that section provided:-
“Where an Act of the Oireachtas repeals the whole or a portion of a previous statute, then, unless the contrary intention appears, any legal proceedings, civil or criminal, in respect of any right, privilege, obligation, or liability acquired, accrued, or incurred under or any offence against or contravention of the statute or portion of a statute so repealed may be instituted, continued or enforced, and any penalty, forfeiture, or punishment in respect of any such offence or contravention may be imposed and carried out as if such statute or portion of a statute had not been repealed.” (Emphasis added).
13. That provision was in force at the date of the passing of the Act of 1993 and the date of the charging of the Appellant. While the Act of 1937 has since been repealed by the Interpretation Act, 2005 and section 21 has been replaced by section 27 of the latter Act, I believe the events relevant to the present appeal continue to be governed by the Act of 1937, because of the transitional or saving provision in section 3(2)(b) of the Act of 2005. Section 3(2)(b) provides:-
“The repeal by this Act of an Act which provides for any matter…… in another enactment does not affect the matter so provided for if—
(i) in the absence of that matter being provided for in this Act, or
(ii) by the application to the other enactment of a matter provided for by this Act which corresponds to a matter provided for in the repealed Act concerned,
the other enactment would be changed in intent or become unclear or absurd.
14. In view of the public importance of the case, the Court invited the Attorney General to make submissions. The Court has, therefore, the benefit of submissions on behalf of the Appellant, the Director and the Attorney General.
15. The High Court and this Court had occasion in the course of consideration of the constitutional claims made in Norris v Attorney General to review the legal history of the crime of buggery. Whether it originated in the common law of England or of Ireland or in statute was not a relevant issue so far as the constitutionality of the prohibition of buggery was concerned. Nonetheless, the judgments, and, in particular, the judgment of McWilliam J in the High Court, represent the only modern examination of the legal history of the offence which was abolished in 1993. It is not surprising, therefore, that the wide-ranging submissions presented to the Court by the parties and the Attorney General make reference, in one way or the other, to those judgments.
16. The Appellant maintains that buggery was historically and at all times in Irish law a common law and not a statutory offence and that the significance of the Act of 1861 was limited to the fact that it provided a penalty. This, it is submitted, is confirmed by the wording of section 61 of that Act:-
“Whosoever shall be convicted of the abominable Crime of Buggery, committed either with Mankind or with any Animal shall be liable, at the Discretion of the Court, to be kept in Penal Servitude for life or for any Term not less than Ten Years.”
17. It is argued that the section did not create the criminal offence or define its component acts. It presumes its existence and prescribes a maximum penalty. The Appellant cites the statements of several learned authors to the effect that the offence was a common law offence: “it is a felony at common law” (Ó Siocháin, The Criminal Law of Ireland, 6th Ed., (1977); “Buggery is a felony at common law the penalty for which was fixed by s 61 of the Offences Against the Person Act, 1861” (Peter Charleton, Offences Against the Person, (1992) at p. 296, para. 8.50)
18. The Director, supported by the Attorney General, submits that the offence was historically both a statutory and a common law offence and relies on the historical analysis contained in the judgment of McWillam J to the effect that it was statutory. He also cites Mr Tom O’Malley’s work on Sexual Offences, (Round Hall, 1996) at pp. 136-137) and the Law Reform Commission, Consultation Paper on Child Sexual Abuse (Dublin, 1989) stating that the offence was created by the Act of 1861. The Attorney General submits that the offence was a statutory offence prior to the enactment of the Act of 1861 and that it continued to be so after that date.
19. The parties have cited a wide range of dicta, not all of them consistent, from successive editions of Halsbury’s Laws of England. It has to be borne in mind that the Sexual Offences Act 1956 repealed the Act of 1861 in England, while there were no changes in our law on the topic until 1993. The first edition of Halsbury (1909), Vol. 1, para. 1091, stated:-
“It is a felony by statute to commit the abominable crime of buggery either with mankind or with an animal. The punishment for this offence is penal servitude for life or for not less than three years, or imprisonment with or without hard labour and for not more than two years.” (Emphasis added)
20. O’Keeffe J noted that the authors based the first proposition on section 61 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861. For what it is worth, therefore, the authors of the first edition of Halsbury were of the opinion that buggery was a felony by statute, the relevant enactment being the Act of 1861. For the second proposition, however, the authors stated:-
“This offence was probably first made punishable by the Common Law Courts by statute (1533 – 4, 25 Hen. VIII, c. 6(2) Stephen, History of the Criminal Law, 429). (See however 1 Hawk. P.C., c. 4). The punishment by 25 Hen. VII c. 6, and so it remained until the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, Section 61.”
21. The Appellant’s written submissions elaborate the distinction between unwritten law (lex non scripta) and written law (lex scripta) by reference to Blackstone and other renowned writers. However, the question is not whether buggery was historically a crime at common law. It probably was. What has to be decided is whether it was made a crime by statute and, more particularly, whether buggery was an offence contrary to statute at the time of its abolition by the Act of 1993.
22. The offence in the present case is laid as being contrary to section 61 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861, which is set out above at paragraph 16.
23. The section itself is inconclusive on the question. It does not purport to create the offence and can be read as impliedly referring to the common law for the origin of the offence itself. Whether that is a correct reading obliges us to consider the law on the subject prior to 1861.
24. Buggery was first made criminal by statute in England in 1533 by the Act of 25 Henry VIII., cap. 6, which did not apply to Ireland.
25. It appears that prior to 1533 buggery was treated as an offence against religion and was triable in the ecclesiastical courts. Many of the text books treat it under the heading ‘Offences against Religion/ Ecclesiastical Offences’. Pollock & Maitland, The History of English Law, Vol. II, 2nd Ed., (Cambridge, 1911) state at p. 556 that it was “so closely connected with heresy that the vulgar had but one name for both”.
26. Although the Act of 25 Hen. VIII did not apply to Ireland, and has long since been repealed in England, that Act forms an important part of the history of the offence. Its provisions were, as we shall see, effectively re-enacted in an Irish Act of a century later. The statute passed at Westminster in the 25th year of the reign of Henry VIII (1533) provided as follows:-
“For as much as there is not yet sufficient and condign Punishment appointed and limited by the due Course of the Laws of this Realm, for the detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery committed with Mankind or Beast …it … be enacted … That the same Offence be from henceforth adjudged Felony, and such Order and Form of Process therein to be used against the Offenders as in the Cases of Felony at the Common Law; and that the Offenders being hereof convict by Verdict Confession or Outlawry, shall suffer such Pains of Death, and Losses and Penalties of their Goods Chattels Debts Lands Tenements and Hereditaments, as Felons be accustomed to do, according to the Order of the Common Laws of this Realm; and that no Person offending in any such Offence shall be admitted to his Clergy; and that Justices of Peace shall have Power and Authority, within the Limits of their Commissions and Jurisdiction, to hear and determine the said Offence, as they douse to do in cases of other Felonies…”
27. Following certain repeals during the reigns of Edward VI and Mary, the Act of Henry VIII was revived and made perpetual by 5 Eliz., cap. XVII (1562) and remained in force until 1828 when it was repealed in England by the passing of 9 Geo. IV, cap. XXXI.
28. What is of interest is that the Act of Henry VIII has been treated by distinguished writers over several centuries as providing the basis in statute law for the crime of buggery. It appears that it also involved depriving the ecclesiastical courts of jurisdiction over the offence. Thomas’ Systematic Arrangement of Lord Coke’s First Institute of the Laws of England (London, 1660) stated:-
“If any person shall commit buggery with mankind or beast, by authority of Parliament this offence is adjudged felony without benefit of Clergy.”
The text continued:-
“The Act of 25 H. 8. hath adjudged it felony, and therefore the judgement for felony doth now belong to this offence, viz. to be hanged by the neck till he be dead. He that readeth the Preamble of this Act, shall finde how necessary the reading of our ancient Authors is. The Statute doth take away the benefit of Clergy from the Delinquent…”
Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, 5th Ed., (Dublin, 1765–1769), Book The Fourth: Of Public Wrongs, pp. 215 to 216, at the end of a lengthy passage on the crime of buggery, stated:-
“But now the general punishment of all felonies is the same, namely, by hanging: and this offence (being in the times of popery only subject to ecclesiastical censures) was made felony without benefit of clergy by statute 25 Hen. VIII. c. 6 revived and confirmed by 5 Eliz. c. 17.”
Deacon’s, Digest of the Criminal Laws of England (London, 1831), dealing with the form of the indictment stated:-
“The indictment should charge, that the prisoner “against the order of nature had a veneral affair with A.B., and then and there carnally knew the said A.B.:” but this is not sufficient, without also charging, that the prisoner “feloniously, &c. with the said A.B. did commit and perpetrate that detestable and abominable crime of buggery;” for this is the express term made use of by the statute.”
Stephens, in his History of the Criminal Law of England, Vol. 11, (London, 1883), at ch. XXV (Offences against Religion), pp. 429 to 430, explained how the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was lost and replaced by statute:-
“The whole of the ecclesiastical ordinary jurisdiction did not fall at once, nor did it all remain untouched till the year 1640. It was always a recognised principle of law that the ecclesiastical courts should not try men for temporal offences, and that if they did so they might be restrained by a writ of prohibition. As some of the crimes with which they concerned themselves came to be regarded as temporal offences of importance they were made felonies by statute, and thus the ecclesiastical courts lost jurisdiction over them. This was the case with several offences.
The earliest enactment of this kind I believe to have been 25 Hen. 8, c. 6 (1533), which makes unnatural offences felony, reciting in the preamble that “there is not yet sufficient and condign punishment appointed by the due course of the laws of this land” for such offences…”
Pollock & Maitland, cited above at para. 25, in Vol. II, ch. VII, s.4 (Ecclesiastical Offences) at pp. 556 to 557, having made the observation, cited above, linking the crime with heresy, observed that the “statute of 1533 which makes it felony affords an almost sufficient proof that the temporal courts had not punished it and that no one had been put to death for it for a very long time past.”
As noted above at para. 19, the first edition of Halsbury (1909), published two years before Pollock & Maitland, took the same view.
29. These commentators were, of course, concerned with English law, in effect, originating with the Act of Henry VIII. While Irish statute law took a different route, it was closely parallel and, in any event, ended with the Offences against the Person Act, 1861, which applied to the entire of what was then the United Kingdom.
30. The first Irish statutory provision on the subject was an Act of the Irish Parliament 10 Charles I, Session 2, c.20 (1634), which is entitled “An Act for the Punishment of the Vice of Buggery.” It was a short enactment and provided virtually in its entirety:
“Forasmuch as there is not yet sufficient and condigne punishment appointed and limited by the due course of the laws of this realme, for the detestable and abhominable vice of buggery committed with mankind or beast; it may therefore please the King’s Highnesse, with the assent of his lords spirituall and temporall, and the commons of this present Parliament assembled, that it may be enacted, and be it enacted by the authority of the same, That the same offence be from henceforth adjudged felonie, and such order and form of processe therein to be used against the offenders, as in the case of felony at the common law; and that the offenders being hereof convicted by verdict, confession, or outlawry, shall suffer such paines of death, and losses … as felons be accustomed to doe, according to the order of the common lawes of this realme…”
31. The Irish Act was materially identical to the English Act of Henry VIII. It made the commission of buggery a felony by statute and provided that the processes of the common law were to apply to it.
32. As a matter of substance, English and Irish law thereafter followed parallel, though virtually identical, courses. The separate, though identical, Acts of the reign of Henry VIII of 1533 (repealed and re-enacted by the Act of 1562), and 1634 remained in effect until 1828 and 1829 respectively when the United Kingdom enacted separate Offences against the Person Acts, one applying to England and Wales and one to Ireland.
33. The Act of 1829, 10 Geo. IV, cap. 34, applicable to Ireland, was passed for the purpose of “consolidating and amending the Statutes……relating to Offences against the Person.” To that end it repealed a large number of enactments, including the Act of 1634 “for the Punishment of the Vice of Buggery,” but replaced them. Amongst other provisions, it enacted section 18:-
“And be it enacted, That every Person convicted of the abominable Crime of Buggery, committed either with Mankind or with any Animal, shall suffer Death as a Felon.”
34. Although the form of the section differs from that of the earlier one —“adjudged felony”— I cannot see that there is any difference in substance and it would be inconsistent with the consolidating objective of the Act that it should make any radical change. The “abominable crime” to which it referred had been a crime, a felony, by statute since 1634. The act of buggery thus remained declared a felony by statute, as it had been for almost two hundred years. As McWilliam J expressed it at p. 41 of Norris, that, by virtue of section 18, the “offence was continued as a felony.”
35. An additional important aspect of the Offences against the Person (Ireland) Act, 1829 has been referred to by both Mr O’Malley and Mr Charleton (though they cite the English rather than the Irish legislation). Section 21 of the Act of 1829 provided:-
“And whereas upon Trials for the Crimes of Buggery and Rape, and of carnally abusing Girls under the respective Ages herein-before mentioned, Offenders frequently escape by reason of the Difficulty of the Proof which has been required of the Completion of these several Crimes: for Remedy thereof be it enacted, That it shall not be necessary in any of those Cases to prove the actual Emission of Seed in order to constitute a carnal Knowledge, but the carnal Knowledge shall be deemed complete upon Proof of Penetration only.”
36. As appears from that section and as is confirmed by the extract from Deacon, cited above at para. 28, the term “carnal knowledge” applies to the commission of both buggery and rape. Section 21 represented a crucial degree of statutory definition of the elements of the offence.
37. In 1861, the Acts of 1828 (England) and 1829 (Ireland) were replaced and repealed in two stages. On 6th August, 1861, both the English and the Irish Acts then in force (i.e. 9 Geo. IV, c. 31; and 10 Geo. IV, c. 34) were repealed by 24 & 25 Vict., c. 95: An Act to repeal certain Enactments which have been consolidated in several Acts of the present Session relating to indictable Offences and other Matters. The Act provided that the repealed Acts would continue in force up until 31st October, 1861 and it contained a saving provision in respect of offences already committed. On the same date, six statutes were passed to consolidate and amend the laws in respect various aspects of the criminal law. One of these was the Offences against the Person Act, 1861 (24 & 45 Vict, c. 100), described as “An Act to consolidate and amend the Statute Law of England and Ireland relating to Offences against the Person.” It was effective as and from 1st November, 1861.
38. Thus, up to the coming into effect of section 61 of that Act, the crime of buggery was, and had been since 1634 in Ireland, an offence by statute. As noted above at para. 16, section 61 provided:-
“Whosoever shall be convicted of the abominable Crime of Buggery, committed either with Mankind or with any Animal, shall be liable at the Discretion of the Court, to be kept in Penal Servitude for Life or for any Term not less than Ten Years.”
39. Section 62 dealt with attempts and is not material for present purposes. Section 63 effectively re-enacted section 21 of the Act of 1829 (10 Geo. IV, c. 34) by providing:
“Whenever, upon the Trial for any Offence punishable under this Act, it may be necessary to prove carnal Knowledge, it shall not be necessary to prove the actual Emission of Seed in order to constitute a carnal Knowledge, but the carnal Knowledge shall be deemed complete upon Proof of Penetration only.”
40. As is clear from the above, the language of section 63 of the Act of 1861 prescribed the essence of the offence of buggery (as also of rape). It provided that the offence is deemed to be committed on proof of penetration only.
41. This history demonstrates that the offence of buggery appeared in the statute books in Ireland without interruption from 1634 until 1993. The Act of 1533 established it as a felony in England and the Act of 1634 did so in Ireland.
42. There were two consolidating phases in the nineteenth century: in Ireland in 1829; and in the United Kingdom as a whole in 1861. These did not involve any break in the statutory criminalisation of the Act. Furthermore, from 1829 the statute provided, and repeated in 1861, the essential sexual element of the crime, namely penetration.
43. In this respect, the Appellant says, firstly, that buggery was an offence at common law, i.e., prior to the enactment of the Act of Henry VIII and, secondly, that that Act did not make it a crime, but merely prescribed a penalty. It is, of course, perfectly possible that buggery was a crime at common law prior to 1533 in England, which I treat as being equivalent to 1634 in Ireland. It would not, however, follow from that supposition, that the act was not made a crime by statute. Indeed, the Appellant in his written submissions observes that section 12 of the (English) Sexual Offences Act, 1956 makes buggery a statutory offence by providing that “it is a felony for a person to commit buggery with another person… or with an animal.”
44. Distinguished commentators on the criminal law from Coke’s Institutes, through to Blackstone and Stephens and Pollock & Maitland have, as is clear from the extracts quoted above, treated the crime as statutory.
45. The first three editions of Halsbury took the same view. The Appellant, however, submits that the fourth edition arrived at the opposite conclusion. It said at para. 505 of the 4th Edition of Halsbury, Vol 11(1) that “at common law it is an indictable offence for a person to commit buggery with an animal or with another person. It is also a statutory offence for a person to commit buggery with another person or with an animal …” It is clear from the context that the statutory basis for the latter statement is the (English) Sexual Offences Act, 1956. I am not at all sure that this passage is inconsistent with buggery having been a statutory offence in England during the currency of the Act of 1861. The passage uses the present tense, i.e., buggery remained a common law offence even after the entry into force of the Act of 1956. Equally, therefore, it may have been a statutory as well as a common law offence before 1956.
46. I am satisfied that buggery was a criminal offence in Ireland by statute at all times from 1634 to 1993. It was a statutory offence when it was abolished in 1993. Consequently, section 21 of the Interpretation Act, 1937 applies to allow the prosecution of offences committed prior to its repeal by the Act of 1993. It follows from this that the possibility of prosecuting a person such as the Appellant for an offence allegedly committed prior to 1993 was preserved by that section. The learned District Judge was in error in declining to make an order on the prosecution of the Appellant. I would affirm the decision of the High Court and dismiss the appeal.
47. The majority of the Court is of the view that the offence of buggery was not a statutory offence when it was abolished in 1993. If that was so, of course, it is necessary to address the Appellant’s submissions as to the applicability and effect of the Interpretation (Amendment) Act 1997. On this particular issue, I find myself in agreement with the judgments of the Chief Justice and of Hardiman J. Section 1 of the Act of 1997 should be interpreted in the light of the principle against doubtful criminalisation. Whatever meaning may be attributed to section 1(1) and (2), the meaning of subsection (4) is so obscure that it could not provide a sound basis for rendering criminal an act which had ceased to be criminal. Moreover, the section would have to be construed in such a way as not to render it incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. These matters are discussed in detail in the judgments of the Chief Justice and of Hardiman J.
48. I would add that, independently of the conclusion I have reached in respect of the crime of buggery, there was never any basis for preventing the prosecution for the other two offences of indecent assault.