DPP v Davis

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judge: FINLAY C.J.
• Judgment Date: 01 January 1993
• Neutral Citation: 1992 WJSC-SC 3499
• Docket Number: [S.C. No. 15 of 1991]
• Court: Supreme Court
• Date: 01 January 1993

1992 WJSC-SC 3499

THE SUPREME COURT

Finlay C.J.

Hederman J.

O'Flaherty J.

Egan J.

Blayney J.

15/91

DPP v. DAVIS

THE DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

Respondent

v.

MARK DAVIS

Appellant

Citations:

CONSTITUTION ART 38.5

CONSTITUTION ART 38.1

CRIMINAL JUSTICE ACT 1964 S4

MELLING V O MATHGHAMHNA & AG 1962 IR 1

DE BURCA V AG 1976 IR 67

DPP, PEOPLE V DWYER 1972 IR 416

YOUMAN V COMMONWEALTH 189 KY 152

AG, PEOPLE V MADDEN 1977 IR 336

DPP, PEOPLE V O'SHEA 1982 IR 384

AG, PEOPLE V O'BRIEN 1965 IR 142

Synopsis:

CONSTITUTION

Trial of offences

Indictment - Jury - Function - Verdict - Determination - Trial judge - Directions - Scope - Restriction - (15/91 - Supreme Court - 9/12/92) - [1993] 2 I.R. 1 - [1993] ILRM 407

|The People v. Davis|

JURY

Function

Verdict - Accused - Guilt - Determination - Trial - Indictment - Count of murder - Direction of trial judge to convict - Accused's appeal allowed - (15/91 - Supreme Court - 9/12/92) - [1993] 2 I.R. 1

|The People v. Davis|

1 JUDGMENT delivered on the 9th day of December 1992by FINLAY C.J. [NEM DISS]

2 This is an appeal by the accused against his conviction on the 15th November 1990 for murder, consequent upon a trial in the Central Criminal Court.

3 On the 13th November 1990 the Appellant was arraigned on a single count charging him with the murder of Stephen Brady on the 17th April 1990. When so arraigned he pleaded, in the following words:

"Not guilty of murder, guilty of manslaughter."

4 Counsel for the prosecution indicated that this plea was not acceptable to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the learned trial judge entered a plea of not guilty. The trial then proceeded; the accused was, of course, represented by solicitor and counsel, and the evidence occupied two days.

5 The evidence for the prosecution which involved some eye-witnesses of the events which led to the death of Stephen Brady may in its most general form be thus summarised.

6 On the evening of the 17th April 1990 the Appellant and Stephen Brady were together in a chip shop in Ballymun at around midnight, when a fight broke out between the Appellant and some other young men in the shop. Stephen Brady went to the assistance of the Appellant and a number of onlookers succeeded in taking both the Appellant and Brady out of the shop. They were both reluctant to leave and were strugglingwith their escorts. The Appellant was brought to a nearby flat and Brady was brought in an opposite direction. The Appellant was in the flat when he apparently heard some talk to the effect that the persons with whom he had been fighting were coming to attack his friend, Brady.

7 He grabbed a long knife from the kitchen and went running out onto the street, apparently looking for the men with whom he had recently been fighting. He saw two men struggling in a corner of a building and stabbed one of them twice in the chest with the knife.

8 The person whom he stabbed turned out to be Stephen Brady and he died almost immediately. He was in fact struggling with his escort who was trying to bring him home.

9 There was evidence that during the course of the day the Appellant had had a considerable amount of alcoholic drink, probably in excess of fourteen pints of beer and some vodka. One witness to the actualstabbing described the Appellant with the words: "He seemed to be out of his head".

10 The Appellant was arrested very shortly after the stabbing and then and on the following morning made statements setting out the facts, broadly, as I have summarised them. He insisted that he had no intention of striking Stephen Brady. His description of the actual stabbing was asfollows:

"I went in and I saw two people pulling at one another. They were fighting. I did not recognise any of them. I just went running in mad blind. I had the knife. I grabbed one of them, the wrong person, I stuck the knife into him. I took it out and stabbed him again. I think I stabbed him twice. I remember grabbing him and pulling him towards me. When I stabbed him I heard him giving a groan. I was grabbed by somebody and pushed away. Somebody said to me that I was after stabbing Stephen. It was then I knew I had stabbed the wrong person. It was the fellow with the black hair that started all the trouble and it was him I thought I was stabbing. I threw the knife away."

11 At the conclusion of the evidence for the prosecution and it being indicated that the accused was neither giving evidence nor calling any witnesses, the learned trial judge having heard submissions, ruled that the evidence of the amount of alcoholic drink consumed by the accused and/or the evidence of his condition could not be grounds upon which the jury would be entitled to return a verdict of manslaughter by reason of any doubt as to the capacity of the accused to form the intention of causing serious injury, by stabbing, to some person. His ruling was in the following words:

"I will have to tell the jury that they are entitled to come to the view that Mr. Davis had a lot of drink taken, that they are entitled to come to the view that he might have been drunk in the social sense of the word, but they are not entitled to come to the view that the evidence in the case would justify them holding as a reasonable jury, that he could not have had an intention of causing serious harm in view of the plain fact of his own statements made later as to what his intention was in picking up the knife."

12 This ruling was made at the conclusion of the second day of the trial, and the following morning counsel for the prosecution and counsel for the defence addressed the jury.

13 At the commencement of his charge, the learned trial judge, having shortly summarised the events of the trial, including the original plea and the submissions made by counsel, together with the broad facts, stated as follows:

"In this case, ladies and gentlemen, the issue therefore is, on the facts which I will outline in a moment, whether the admitted facts amount to the crime of murder or amount to the crime of manslaughter or, to put it another way, which I will develop in a moment, whether the jury should have a reasonable doubt that he was guilty of murder and so find him guilty of manslaughter. And that brings me to the point which makes this case a very unusual one, because I must direct you, ladies and gentlemen, that as a matter of law the facts of this case admit of only one verdict, namely, that of murder, and I must explain that to younow."

14 The learned trial judge then proceeded in the course of his charge to the jury to review the legal situation and to explain it. He also reviewed, in short terms, the facts of the case; quoted to them from the contents of the statements made by the accused to the members of the Garda Siochana and again repeated his legal ruling that the prosecution had established beyond a reasonable doubt that the drink which the accused had consumed that day before the crime did not prevent him from forming the intention to cause serious injury. He then concluded his charge to the jury with the following words:

"And I must direct you as a consequence and corollary to what I have said that no reasonable jury could find that the accused was guilty of manslaughter on the occasion and not guilty of murder, and so I must direct you as a matter of law that on the facts of this case you must return a verdict of murder. And I give you, Mr. Foreman, the issue paper now and I would ask you to sign this as the verdict of thejury."

15 Counsel for the prosecution then intervened to remind the learned trial judge that there were copies of the statements made by the accused available, and the learned trial judge then addressed the jury asfollows:

"Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to, you can go to your room. Perhaps you would like to go to your room, but you know what my instructions/directions were."

16 The jury then retired at 12.20 p.m. Counsel made submissions with regard to the learned trial judge's charge and the jury returned to Court at 12.50 p.m. and the foreman asked the following question:

"I would like to ask, my lord, do we have to have a unanimous decision on the verdict?"

17 In reply the learned trial judge, having explained his function with regard to law on the matter, informed the jury:

"You must all agree then to follow the direction which I have given you, which is a direction to find the accused guilty ofmurder."

18 The jury then retired and subsequently returned to Court with a verdict of guilty to the count of murder and the foreman confirmed that this was the verdict of them all.

19 It is not contested on the hearing of this appeal that the verdict thus entered by the jury in this case was the result of a specific direction given to the jury as a direction which had to be followed that they were to reach a unanimous verdict of guilty of murder. It would not be possible to contest this fact and the process of the trial at the conclusion of the learned trial judge's charge, as I have summarised it, clearly indicated that he intended that the foreman of the jury, without discussion with any of his fellow jurors, should in obedience to the learned trial judge's direction sign a verdict of guilty on the count of murder, without leaving the jury box. In other words, what was, I think, clearly intended at the trial was that the verdict would be one in the same form and reached in thesame manner as is a verdict of not guilty by direction, where a trial judge has ruled that there is not...