DPP v Ward

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judge: MR JUSTICE FRANCIS D MURPHY
• Judgment Date: 22 March 2002
• Neutral Citation: 2002 WJSC-CCA 2306
• Court: Court of Criminal Appeal
• Date: 22 March 2002

2002 WJSC-CCA 2306

THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEAL

MURPHY J

O'CAOIMH J

MCKECHNIE J

RECORD No 14/99

DPP v. WARD

THE PEOPLE AT THE SUIT OF THE DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

V

PAUL WARD

Applicant

Citations:

CRIMINAL JUSTICE ACT 1990 S1

OFFENCES AGAINST THE STATE ACT 1939 S30

DPP V EGAN 1990 ILRM 780

CRIMINAL PROCEDURE ACT 1993 S3

DPP V MEEHAN UNREP SCC 29.7.1999 (TRANSCRIPT)

DPP V GILLIGAN UNREP SCC 15.3.2001 (TRANSCRIPT)

R V WILLIAMS 1995 1 CAR 74

R V SMITH 1995 1 CAR 74

Synopsis:

CRIMINAL LAW

Appeal

Conviction - Murder - Court of Criminal Appeal - Fair procedures - Accomplice evidence - Whether conviction unsafe - Whether evidence of accomplice credible (14/1999 - CCA - 22/3/2002)

DPP v Ward

Facts: The applicant had been convicted in the Special Criminal Court of the murder of a journalist, Veronica Guerin, and had been sentenced to life imprisonment. The applicant sought leave to appeal against the conviction. The evidence tendered against the accused was given by an accomplice.

Held by the Court of Criminal Appeal (Murphy J delivering judgment; Ó Caoimh J and McKechnie J agreeing) in allowing the application, quashing the conviction and setting aside the sentence. The accomplice who gave evidence at the trial of the applicant had lied again and again. The evidence given by an accomplice must be corroborated from independent sources or alternatively the jury should be warned of the dangers of convicting without such corroboration. The general lack of credibility attached to the accomplice meant that his evidence must be considered with the utmost care. In reviewing the evidence tendered it was the view of the Court that the Special Criminal Court was misled by the confusing evidence and the voluminous documentation placed before it. The evidence presented did not show that the applicant had participated in the planning of the crime.

1 MR JUSTICE FRANCIS D MURPHY ON THE 22nd Day Of March , 2002

2 At about 12.55 am on Wednesday 26th June, 1996, Ms. Veronica Guerin, a distinguished journalist and crime reporter, was brutally murdered. She had left Naas Courthouse some time earlier and was driving along the Naas Road. She reached the Boot Road junction which was then controlled by traffic lights. Her car, and other vehicles, were halted by the lights. While she was stopped a motor cycle drew up alongside her car. The rider and a pillion passenger both wore full sized helmets which concealed their faces and motor cycle clothing which disguised their appearance. The pillion passenger broke a window on Ms. Guerin's side of the car and fired six bullets into it. All six bullets struck the victim causing fatal injuries from which she died virtually immediately. The accused, Paul Ward, was charged with the murder of Ms. Guerin before the Special Criminal Court and on the 27th of November, 1998, he was convicted and, in accordance with s.1 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1990, was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for life with the proviso that the sentence should be backdated to the 16th of October, 1996. It is from that conviction that the applicant seeks leave to appeal to this court.

3 In the judgment delivered by the President of the Special Criminal Court the case presented by the Director of Public Prosecutions (the D.P.P.) was summarised in the following terms, at p. 2:-

"The prosecution does not contend that he [Mr. Ward] was the gunman or the motorcyclist or that he was present at the scene of the crime. The case against him is that he participated in the planning of the murder and that pursuant to such plans he played an important role in the crime by receiving from the killers very soon after the event the motor cycle and the gun which they had used and he disposed of both thereafter. The evidence against the accused comprises verbal admissions allegedly made by him while in police custody following his arrest under section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act, 1939on 16th October 1996 and the testimony of Charles Bowden, an accomplice, whose evidence purports to establish that the accused was an accessory before the fact of Ms Guerin's murder."

4 The accused was arrested at 3.30 p.m. on the 16th of October, 1996, and brought to Lucan garda station which was the headquarters of the Guerin murder investigation. It was common case that the accused maintained a firm policy of silence during five sessions of interrogation totalling fourteen and a half hours. On the evening of the second day of his detention Mr. Ward was visited by his girlfriend and partner Vanessa Meehan. She had been arrested by the gardaí and it was they who brought her - without any request from Mr. Ward - to visit him at the station in Lucan. That visit lasted for one hour and the accused was then further interrogated at 10.35 p.m. when he was recorded by the interviewers as answering questions in the following terms:-

" Q	What did Vanessa say to you?
A	She knows nothing, she wasn't in the house that day.
Q	What day?
A	The day the Guerin one was shot. She wasn't in the house. She knows nothing about it.
Q	What happened at your house after the shooting?
A	Meehan and Holland called.
Q	Why did they call to your house?
A	You'se know why they called.
Q	Tell us why?
A	We had it planned after the job was done on Guerin they would come back to my place, I was to get rid of the gear.
Q	What do you mean by gear?
A	The gun and the bike, I got rid of them.
Q	Where are they now?
A	No response.
Q	Is it hidden where somebody else will find it? You know someone else might get shot?
A	No response."

5 In the course of the trial the accused challenged the legality of his arrest, his subsequent detention and his interrogation. In particular it was contended that the visit by Vanessa Meehan and the subsequent visit by the 74 year old mother of Mr. Ward, which were arranged and orchestrated by the gardaí, constituted unfair oppression of the accused amounting to a conscious and deliberate violation of his right to fair procedures. The ruling of the Court delivered by the President thereof on the 23rd day of October, 1998, concluded in the following terms:-

"In the light of the foregoing assessment is there a reasonable possibility that the visits of Ms. Meehan and Mrs. Ward to the accused or either visit were orchestrated by the police as a stratagem to oppress the accused and cause him to take a course of action favourable to the prosecution against him? That is the essence of the issue. The court is satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt that no such possibility exists. Accordingly, that ground also has not been established.

The court is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt about the legality of the accused's arrest by Inspector Kennedy on the 16th October 1996 and of his subsequent detention and interrogation at Lucan garda station."

6 The issue as to the admissibility of statements alleged to have been made by the accused while in custody in Lucan garda station was revisited by the Special Criminal Court and the relevant facts reviewed by the learned President of that court in the judgment delivered by him on the 27th day of November, 1998. The judgment of the Court on that issue concluded with the following paragraph at p. 17:-

"The court is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the alleged admissions made by the accused in the course of his interrogation by [named gardaí] on the night of 17th October (if in fact made by him) were induced by grievous psychological pressure, which emanated from his meeting with Ms. Meehan immediately prior thereto, to such an extent that there was a real risk that the pressure remained and affected the free will of the accused to such an extent that it undermined the voluntary nature of subsequent alleged admissions made by him - if such were in fact made."

7 That ruling re-echoes comments made earlier in the judgment (at p. 14) as to the reality of the admissions in the following terms:-

"The court also has some element of doubt about whether the alleged verbal admissions were in fact made by the accused or whether, as he contends, he made no admissions at all during the entire period of his detention. There is some evidence which might reasonably be regarded as supporting the accused's denial of having made any admissions. Perhaps the most significant is the remarkable fact that the first two pairs of interrogators who interviewed the accused on 18th October were unaware of the fundamental breakthrough which is alleged to have occurred at the last interrogation session on the previous night when it is contended the accused in effect admitted to being an accessory before the fact of murder."

8 In those circumstances the case of the prosecution consisted virtually, if not entirely, of the evidence given by Mr. Charles Bowden.

9 Charles Bowden gave evidence as to how in 1994 he became, or resumed, membership of a criminal gang which dealt extensively in controlled drugs. It was his evidence that the principal of the gang was John Gilligan and that his main lieutenants or "line managers", as they were described in evidence, were Brian Meehan, Peter Mitchell, Shay Ward (a brother of the accused), Paul Ward and himself, Charles Bowden. This despicable enterprise appears to have been operated and managed with very considerable efficiency and enormous financial success. Each of the line managers had a particular area of responsibility although their duties did occasionally overlap. Mr. Bowden was primarily concerned with the distribution of drugs: Mr. Paul Ward with the collection of the price to be paid by the immediate customers. In addition Mr. Bowden occasionally collected the replacement stocks of...