DPP v Duff

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judgment Date: 29 July 2010
• Date: 29 July 2010
• Docket Number: (C.C.A. No. 265 of 2008)
• Court: Court of Criminal Appeal

The People (Director of Public Prosecutions) v. Duff

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

Prosecutor

and

Darren Duff

Accused

[2010] IECCA 87

(C.C.A. No. 265 of 2008)

Court of Criminal Appeal

Criminal law - Fair trial - Publicity - Publication of article during trial - Reports of witness intimidation - Whether real or serious risk of unfair trial established - Whether charge to jury sufficient in the particular circumstances of case - Whether real risk jury would associate article with trial - Whether prejudice to accused

The accused was charged with assault causing serious harm. The assault was witnessed by ten persons who subsequently refused to give evidence at the trial itself.

Four days after the trial commenced an article was published on the front page of a national Sunday newspaper which indicated that prior to the commencement of the trial one of the chief witnesses who was due to give evidence in a major criminal trial had been intimidated by the person accused of the crime and that An Garda Síochána were investigating the matter. The person accused of the serious crime was not identified in the article.

Counsel for the accused made an application to discharge the jury on the basis that there was a real risk that members of the jury would connect the acts of intimidation referred to in the publication with the trial before them. The trial judge accepted that the publication might be interpreted in that way by the members of the jury. However the trial judge refused to discharge the jury and directed the jury in general terms to ignore what had been said in newspapers regarding the trial.

On appeal it was submitted that the members of the jury should have been discharged as there was a significant risk that members of the jury would connect the article with the accused and lead to an unfair trial.

Held by the Court of Criminal Appeal (Fennelly, de Valera and Edwards JJ.), in allowing the appeal, quashing the conviction and directing a re-trial, that there was a real risk of an unfair trial arising from the publication by a major newspaper immediately prior to and during the trial of a serious crime of material directly related to the subject matter of the trial and likely to be prejudicial to the trial. An appropriate direction might counteract the ill effects of prejudicial publicity in all but rare cases. However, it was not possible by mere direction to remedy the ill effects of publicity in the particular circumstances before the court where the article appeared during the currency of a trial, described an incident which took place days before the trial and where the facts of the article fitted very well with the facts of the particular case.

There are no cases mentioned in this report.

Application for leave to appeal

The facts have been summarised in the headnote and are more fully set out in the judgment of the Court...