Director of Public Prosecutions v Sweeney, Beirne & O'Toole

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Court: Court of Appeal (Ireland)
• Judge: Charleton J,Edwards J,McCarthy J
• Judgment Date: 31 July 2024
• Neutral Citation: [2024] IECA 205
• Docket Number: Court of Appeal record number: 231, 235, 244/2023

Between

The People (at the suit of the Director of Public Prosecutions)

Prosecutor/Respondent

and

Patrick Sweeney, Paul Beirne and Martin O'Toole

Accused/Appellants

[2024] IECA 205

Charleton J

Edwards J

McCarthy J

Court of Appeal record number: 231, 235, 244/2023

Circuit Criminal Court bill number: RN 25/2019

An Chúirt Achomhairc

The Court of Appeal

Judgment of the Court, delivered on Wednesday 31 July 2024

1 The 2018 events in Roscommon leading to this judgment were horrific: the very antithesis of public-spiritedness and empathy to fellow-creatures. Though dressed up as public action in redress of injustice, eight security-men, simply doing their job for modest wages, were targeted by a vicious mob and made submit to the lowest of attacks on their irreducible entitlement to human dignity.

2 Over 37 seconds, a snippet of the attack was captured in very good quality video footage by a body camera that one of the victims turned on and only turned off because of revolting threats of violence accompanied by filthy language. Patrick Sweeney and Martin O'Toole were identified as two of those six assailants, out of an overall mob of perhaps forty, appearing in the footage. They challenge the admissibility of this cogent evidence on this appeal and did so, over several months at trial. This was done on the basis of procedures, that Garda procedures ought to have been better and that by not meeting imaginary standards of perfection, somehow prejudice was caused. As this judgment later addresses, prejudice does not mean a good or a bad investigation. Further, identification is a matter of fact. The trial, which ought to be about whether the prosecution have adduced sufficient evidence to prove the guilt of accused persons beyond a reasonable doubt, was turned into an irrelevant discussion about police procedures, hunting the chimera of unrighteousness where no legal basis enabled this exercise.

3 On behalf of Patrick Sweeney, it is argued that his conviction should be overturned because: the video evidence was somehow inadmissible; the search warrant that led to the uncovering of evidence supporting his guilt was unlawful due to an inadequate and deceptive sworn information laid before the issuing judge; the information volunteered in interview by him that he had once been made bankrupt, thus having no love of banks; the tacit agreement of the mob of which he was part did not extend to all of the crimes the jury found him guilty of; the jury should have been discharged when one of the victims told the court he had never worked in the security sector again and had suffered psychiatric harm and a brain injury.

4 Those points as to the search warrants are taken up by Paul Beirne and Martin O'Toole, though the warrants and the sworn informations underlying them were different. The video is also relevant to Martin O'Toole, who makes the same point. They also say that they had some kind of right to be tried in Roscommon and that transferring a trial from one part of this Republic to another undermined their rights under Article 38 of the Constitution. Further, while there was a search of their houses, they felt unable to leave and hence their detentions started some hours, about 140 minutes in the case of Paul Beirne, before official commencement through formal arrest, thus ruling out a statement made by Paul Beirne admitting participation. They also take up the scope of the common design point: that they were not participating though in the mob. They also fear prejudice due to the injury revealed by one of the victims. Paul Beirne asserts that his admission to participation in a mob attack that, according to him, “got out of hand” is inadmissible.

5 As regards Martin O'Toole, the evidence objected to was: 1, his identification on the footage; 2, admissions when shown the footage that he was there “at the end”; 3, mobile communications setting up the attack; 4, warrant of search that did not mention mobile phones. As regards Paul Beirne, the evidence objected to was: 1, admissions made; 2, admissions which segued from a statutory requirement to account for evidence whereby otherwise an inference might be drawn by a jury adverse to his innocence; 3, informal detention amounting to arrest; 4, illness and not eating undermining his confession to involvement; 5, mobile communications setting up the attack; 6, the warrant to search his lands (first) and his house (second), both being in different District Court areas; 7, unlawfully transferring him to trial outside Roscommon. Patrick Sweeney objects to: 1, anything found in consequence of searching his home, that includes phones and mobile communications; 2, the bodycam footage (unchallenged in any way as to the fact of him appearing on it) on which he is so prominent; 3, supposedly prejudicial reference made by him, in police interview, to being bankrupt and a reference by a victim to the effect of the attack; 4, the scope of the doctrine of common design; 5, other variants of the points made by him and by the two other accused. All make a point about the continuity of evidence as well, namely the bodycam.

6 The Court has considered all the points made in various forms. But what was proven at the trial, albeit unchallenged save as to legal argument, applications in the absence of the jury and points made seeking yet more explorations of the Garda investigation?

16 December 2018, 05h07 to 05h21

7 These repellent events happened at Falsk in County Roscommon, not far from the National Famine Museum at Strokestown House on 16 December 2018. Throughout the country, reminders of the great famine, 1845 on, in terms of deserted villages and the folk memories that still persist generations later, mean that this pivotal event in the history of the Irish people is not just an aspect of archaeological history but a living wound. No Irish person, indeed no one of any nationality, can read Cecil Woodham-Smith's The Great Hunger (London, 1962) without the deepest of upset at how human sympathy was utterly displaced in favour of an insane ideology that led to countless death, forced emigration and a body-blow to our culture. Her searing analysis is of a time when Ireland was under alien and hostile rule. This is part of the inspiration for the purpose of the Constitution, as set out in the Preamble, where the Irish people recall times when only faith sustained them: “Ar mbeith dúinne, muintir na hÉireann, ag admháil go huiríseal a mhéid atáimid faoi chomaoin ag Íosa Críost, ár dTiarna Dia, a thug comhfhurtacht dár sinsir i ngach cruatan ina rabhadar ar feadh na gcéadta bliain”. Our time, from 2008 on in particular, was characterised by the coming home of debts voluntarily undertaken by people who were, perhaps, over optimistic, where the legal system is now ours and where everyone understands that the obligation to repay money arises the instant it is borrowed. Otherwise, non-payment of debt leads to the securing of unpaid monies on whatever property the debtor owns. That is an inevitable consequence of unwise borrowing.

8 Displacement from a family home can be the duty of a judge, the obligation to apply the law contrary to human instinct. Here, the background to these horrific events was of legal proceedings in the High Court for the most usual cause of this kind of order, the borrowing of large amounts of money and the debtor not paying. On 8 August 2018 KBC Bank eventually secured an order from the High Court order authorising the repossession of a family home and adjacent land where, it would seem, three people lived. In December 2018 KBC Bank hired another company to arrange the repossession of the property. In turn this was contracted to GS Agencies, a security company. The occupants ignored the High Court order and did not leave peacefully. Hence, on 11 December 2018 the court order was enforced with people and animals removed from this property by those working for GS Agencies. There was much upset. There was cause for this. Any fair-minded man or woman would attribute that to resistance to a valid order, to the need to enforce the law as declared by the High Court, and to the ultimate but upsetting consequence of borrowing money that is not repaid. Instead, through a mob mentality, it became as if the borrowing was not the decision of the property-owner and the order of the High Court was invalid. A nasty exclusionary attitude also was cultivated whereby those of foreign nationality, in so far as they might be involved in enforcing a court order, were agents of terrorism and a foreign power. The security men occupying the premises were called members of the Ulster Volunteer Force, as if 1971 events which killed 15 and the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings, which killed 34, were the blood on the hands of these innocent wage-earners tasked with enforcing a court order by an Irish court.

9 In summary, the prosecution assert that Paul Beirne drove a cattle truck to a local pub and picked up several other individuals, including Patrick Sweeney and Martin O'Toole. All in all there could be 40 or more who took part in the inhuman degradation that followed. The lorry arrived at the house and a teleporter (a telescopic fork-lift type of vehicle) broke down the gates. This happened at about 05.00 hours. In the house, a security man turned on his bodycam and 37 seconds of horror were recorded. Curiously, on this appeal, counsel submitted that the identification was not challenged. A reading of the entire transcript shows, however, that some questions were asked as to the issue. The video can be considered by a jury as to who was shown engaging in this horrible conduct. These shown were Martin O'Toole, who admitted to gardaí in interview that the images showed him, and Patrick Sweeney who was identified by an officer of An Garda Síochána. The quality of image could not be better. This shows an invasion of the house,...