DPP v Seredych

JurisdictionIreland
JudgeMr. Justice Birmingham
Judgment Date03 November 2016
Neutral Citation[2016] IECA 415
Docket Number7/16
CourtCourt of Appeal (Ireland)
Date03 November 2016

[2016] IECA 415

THE COURT OF APPEAL

Birmingham J.

Birmingham J.

Sheehan J.

Mahon J.

7/16

The People at the Suit of the Director of Public Prosecutions
Respondent
V
Ivan Seredych
Appellant

Conviction – Sexual assault – Corroboration warning – Appellant seeking to appeal against conviction – Whether trial judge acted within her discretion

Facts: The appellant, Mr Seredych, on the 18th November, 2015, was convicted of a single count of sexual assault and he was subsequently sentenced to a term of three years imprisonment which was backdated to the day of conviction when he went into custody. He appealed to the Court of Appeal against his conviction arguing that the judge erred when she declined to give a corroboration warning to the jury when requested to do so.

Held by the Court that, having referred to DPP v Ryan [2010] IECCA 29 and DPP v Mulligan (ex tempore, Court of Criminal Appeal, 27 March, 2009), the decision not to give the warning was not manifestly a wrong exercise of the trial judge’s discretion.

The Court held that it would dismiss the appeal.

Appeal dismissed.

JUDGMENT of the Court (ex tempore) delivered on the 3rd day of November 2016 by Mr. Justice Birmingham
1

On the 18th November, 2015, the appellant was convicted of a single count of sexual assault and he was subsequently sentenced to a term of three years imprisonment which was backdated to the day of conviction when he went into custody. He has now appealed against his conviction.

2

A single ground of appeal has been argued, which is that the judge erred when she declined to give a corroboration warning to the jury when requested to do so. A second somewhat related issue had been referred to in the written submissions which related to a request at the requisition stage by junior counsel for the defence that the judge, notwithstanding that she had said that she was not prepared to give a corroboration warning, should nonetheless have explained the concept of corroboration to the jury and highlighted its absence for them. That point was expressly not argued by senior counsel for the appellant who moved the appeal before us.

3

It is appropriate to refer very briefly to the background to the trial in order to provide context for the corroboration issue which arises today. On the 9th/10th June, 2012, the complainant who was living in Cavan at the time was in Dublin and she was socialising in Dublin. She had travelled in order to attend a 21st birthday party which was taking place in Clontarf Castle. After the events there, a number of those who were at the party made their way to the city centre and in particular to the Temple Bar area. In the early hours of the morning, perhaps around 3.00 a.m. she became separated from her friends. It may be said that she has always acknowledged that she had consumed alcohol on the occasion at a number of different locations. She had said ‘I wasn't too bad, I wasn't falling around the place like, I can quite remember what happened, I can quite remembered what happened, the events that happened so I wasn't very drunk’.

4

Separated from her friends, the injured party decided to walk to McDonalds in O'Connell Street, where she hoped that she might meet up with some of them. She made her way across the Millennium Bridge and walked in the direction of O'Connell Street, she was feeling ‘vulnerable’, that is her word, and was visibly upset and was crying. At one stage at least she was shouting for her friends.

5

On the North Quays a taxi pulled over. The driver told her to stop crying and he offered to take her home. She told him that she was going to Donaghmeade and she got into the car, sitting in the front passenger seat. According to the complainant very shortly into the journey, he put his hand on her thigh. She remonstrated with him in Polish thinking that that was his nationality and that Polish was his language. In fact the taxi driver was Ukrainian. The injured party had some colloquial Polish as a Polish lodger had stayed with her family or with friends at some stage. He asked her had she a boyfriend, while all the time keeping his hands on her thigh. He then proceeded to move his hand further up under her underwear and touched her on the vagina. The injured party at the time was wearing a short gold party dress.

6

According to the complainant, when the taxi reached the seafront road in Clontarf, the driver pulled into a car park and he asked her if she would like to kiss. At this stage the complainant took out her phone and took down his name and badge numbers from the identification documents which were on the dashboard of the taxi while pretending to be engaged in texting a friend. The driver drove out of the car park and she directed him to drop her in Raheny where she knew that there was a garda station.

7

Again according to the complainant on the way there, he kept touching her vagina before exposing his penis taking her hand and placing it on his penis. She pulled her hand away and then when they arrived in the vicinity of Raheny garda station, she got out of the car and the driver did not make a request for payment. She went into the Raheny garda station where she became very upset and she asked to speak to a female garda. She did speak to a member of the gardaí, Garda Haverty, soon afterwards and described to her what had happened which included a description from the complainant and details in relation to the car as well as the details that she had entered on her phone.

8

In terms of the subsequent investigation the position is that a search warrant was obtained in respect of the appellant's home and on the 25th July, 2012, gardaí went there and the taxi badge with photograph and number were located. The badge matched the details...

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4 cases
  • Seredych v The Minister for Justice
    • Ireland
    • Supreme Court
    • 13 Octubre 2020
    ...under s. 2 of the Criminal Law (Rape) (Amendment) Act 1990, upheld on appeal to the Court of Appeal: The People (DPP) v. Seredych [2016] IECA 415. 6 On 20 May 2016, solicitors for the respondent applied to renew his permission to remain due to soon expire. The Minister refused renewal on 5......
  • Seredych v The Minister for Justice and Equality
    • Ireland
    • High Court
    • 22 Marzo 2018
    ...are described in the judgment of Birmingham J. at paras. 3 to 7 of his judgment in the criminal appeal ( D.P.P. v. Seredych [2016] IECA 415 (Unreported, Court of Appeal, 3rd November, 2016)), as follows: '3. On 9th/10th June 2012 the complainant who was living in Cavan at the time was in D......
  • Seredych v The Minister for Justice and Equality
    • Ireland
    • Supreme Court
    • 25 Marzo 2020
    ...the Circuit Court in 2015 and whose appeal against conviction was refused by the Court of Appeal in 2016, The People (DPP) v. Seredych [2016] IECA 415. He left the State on 24 April 2018 following an unsuccessful challenge to a deportation order made by the applicant Minister on 8 February ......
  • Seredych v Minister for Justice & Equality
    • Ireland
    • High Court
    • 29 Octubre 2019
    ...to three years’ imprisonment. A second child was born in 2016. His appeal against conviction was dismissed in D.P.P. v. Seredych [2016] IECA 415 (Unreported, Court of Appeal, 3rd November, 3 A deportation order was made on 8th February, 2018. On 13th February, 2018, the applicant's solicito......

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