DPP v Gleeson
| Jurisdiction | Ireland |
| Judge | O'Donnell J.,McKechnie J.,Dunne J. |
| Judgment Date | 06 December 2017 |
| Neutral Citation | [2017] IESCDET 136 |
| Court | Supreme Court |
| Date | 06 December 2017 |
[2017] IESCDET 136
THE SUPREME COURT
DETERMINATION
O'Donnell J.
McKechnie J.
Dunne J.
This determination relates to an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court from a judgment of the Court of Appeal (Birmingham J., Mahon and Edwards JJ.) delivered on the 14th November, 2016, and from the resulting Order of that Court made on the 5th December, 2016, and perfected on the 20th January, 2017.
The Director of Public Prosecutions, referred to as ‘the DPP’ or ‘the applicant’, seeks leave to appeal to this Court from the said judgment and Order of the Court of Appeal.
Trevor Gleeson opposes the application for leave to appeal, and is referred to in this Determination as ‘the accused’ or ‘the respondent’.
The jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to hear appeals is set out in the Constitution. As is clear from the terms of Article 34.5.3° thereof and from the many determinations made by this Court since the enactment of the Thirty-third Amendment, it is necessary, in order for this Court to grant leave to appeal from a decision of the Court of Appeal, that it be established by the applicant that the decision sought to be appealed involves a matter of general public importance, or that it is otherwise necessary in the interests of justice that there be an appeal to this Court.
Any ruling in a determination is a decision particular to that application and is final and conclusive only as far as the parties are concerned. The issue calling for the Court's consideration is whether the facts and legal issues meet the constitutional criteria as above identified. It will not, save in the rarest of circumstances, be appropriate to rely on a refusal of leave as having a precedential value relative to the substantive issues, if and when such issues should further arise in a different case. Where leave is granted on any issue, that matter will in due course be disposed of in the substantive decision of the Court.
The respondent was a prison officer at the Midlands prison. On the 22nd December, 2009, he was observed parking his car in Kildare town. Robert Dillon, a convicted criminal, was seen getting into the respondent's vehicle, whereupon the car was driven a short distance, following which Mr Dillon left the car. The observing gardaí followed and then stopped the respondent. Before stopping the vehicle, they witnessed a plastic bag being thrown from the car. That bag was retrieved and was found to have contained Diamorphine and cannabis with a total street value of approximately €6,000.
The respondent was duly arrested, detained, questioned and charged with five counts of possession of controlled drugs contrary to section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977, as amended (‘the 1977 Act’), and four counts of possession of controlled drugs for unlawful sale or supply contrary to section 15 of the 1977 Act (‘the section 15 counts’).
From the outset, the respondent maintained that he had been threatened by known criminals both inside and outside the Midlands Prison for the purposes of bringing illicit drugs into the prison for use by prisoners. He maintained that it was his intention at all times to dump the drugs rather than bring them into the prison. The issue as to whether the respondent was acting under duress was central at his trial. In the course of her charge to the jury on this issue, the learned trial judge stated, inter alia, that:
‘[The test for duress] is what is described as an objective test, in that it does not depend on what the particular accused regarded as appropriate in the circumstances, which would be described as a subjective test. It is an objective test, decided by reference to objective criteria and not to the accused's subjective perceptions, because it is proper that any rational system of law should take into account the standards of honest and reasonable persons. … In judging what a reasonable person would do you are not expected to imagine a saint or a particularly weak or a particularly tough or hard individual, and therefore you should adopt the posture of a reasonable person, being a sober person of reasonable firmness of the accused's age and gender. Pose the question: “what in your judgement, as judges of fact, would such a person have done in the circumstances? Would he have felt compelled to act in the manner in which he did?'’
Counsel for Mr Gleeson made a requisition in relation to this part of the charge, but the learned trial judge declined to re-charge the jury in relation to this element of the defence of duress.
The respondent was convicted, by a majority verdict, by a jury at Naas Circuit Criminal Court on the 12th December, 2012, of the five counts of simple possession contrary to section 3 of the 1977 Act (‘the section 3 convictions’). He was later sentenced to a term of imprisonment of eighteen months...
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DPP v Gleeson
...240 C.L.R. 95; [2010] 2 L.R.C. 607. Determinations mentioned in this report The People (Director of Public Prosecutions) v. Gleeson [2017] IESCDET 136, (Unreported, Supreme Court, 6 December 2017). Criminal law — Defences — Duress — Threats of violence — Defence of duress — Standard by whic......