DPP v Nangle

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judge: Finlay P.
• Judgment Date: 01 January 1984
• Neutral Citation: 1983 WJSC-HC 2278
• Docket Number: 632 SS/1982
• Court: High Court
• Date: 01 January 1984

1983 WJSC-HC 2278

THE HIGH COURT

632 SS/1982

D.P.P. v. NANGLE

IN THE MATTER OF THE COURTS (SUPPLEMENTAL PROVISIONS) ACT, 1961

BETWEEN:

THE DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

Complaint

and

THOMAS NANGLE

Defendant

Subject Headings:

CASE STATED: notice

CRIMINAL LAW: acquital

CRIMINAL LAW: appeal

PRACTICE: procedure; procedure

1 9th day of May 1983byFinlay P.

Finlay P.

2 This is an appeal by way of case Stated brought by the Director of Public Prosecutions against the acquittal by District Justice John H. Barry of the Respondent who was brought before him on a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

3 The sole grounds of the appeal were that there was insufficient evidence before the learned District Justice to support a decision to acquit the Respondent or to put the matter in another way, that on the evidence as found by the learned District Justice andstated by him in the case, a decision to acquit the Respondent was a perverse decision in the technical legal meaning of that term. I accept the general principles stated on behalf of the Appellant and conceded by Counsel on behalf of the Respondent that where a District Justice reaches a determination which is unsupported by any evidence before him that that constitutes good grounds for setting aside his decision on an appeal brought by way of case stated. Whilst the reported decisions on this matter and the experience of the courts is that it has been almost universally confined to cases of appeals against conviction by a District Justice, there can be no valid distinction in principle which could make it inapplicable to a like appeal against an acquittal. That statement can be said to be subject to the qualification that in the case of an appeal against an acquittal the onus of proof beyond a reasonable doubt rests upon the prosecution and that includes, as occurred in this case, the onus ofnegativing by a standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt a defence such as self-defence.

4 The material facts found by the learned District Justice in the case stated before me upon which I must base my decision on the legal point thus raised may be summarised as follows.

5 Three witnesses were tendered as eye-witnesses of the alleged assault by the Respondent on the injured party who was one James McGovern. They were one Vincent McGovern, the proprietor of a public house in which the assault was alleged to have occurred, his son Seamus McGovern and Raymond...