Dunne v Clinton

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judge: KENNEDY C.J.,FITZGIBBON J.,MURNAGHAN J.
• Judgment Date: 12 February 1931
• Neutral Citation: 1930 WJSC-SC 272
• Judgment citation (vLex): [1931] 2 JIC 1201
• Docket Number: 42/1930
• Court: Supreme Court (Irish Free State)
• Date: 12 February 1931

1930 WJSC-SC 272

SUPREME COURT

KENNEDY C.J.

FITZGIBBON J.

MURNAGHAN J.

42/1930

43/1930

Dunne v. Clinton

DUNNE

V

CLINTON

1 JUDGMENTS DELIVERED ON 12th February, 1931 .KENNEDY C.J.

KENNEDY C.J.

2 It is hardly necessary to reserve judgment in this case. We are all perfectly clear on the position. If it called for any elaborate consideration - we don't think it does - we would reserve it, but I think as the Court of Criminal Appeal laid down in Cox's case, there is no difference between detention and imprisonment. Taking a classical definition of imprisonment from theTermes de la ley:

3 "Imprisonment is the restraint of a man's liberty, where it be in the open field, or in the Street or cage in the Streets, or in a man's own house as well as in the common gaol. And in all these places the party so restrained is said to be a prisoner for so long as he hath not his liberty freely to go at all times to all places whether he will without bail or mainprize".

4 Now, this thing fbr which this new term of "detention" has been invented and is sought to be introduced is imprisonment within the recopnised definition of the law. Taking that old definition as a standard, on the evidence here there is no question, because with all the astuteness and ability of Mr. Lynch, he has not been able to show that those men were voluntary boarders for two days in the police barracks. On the evidence they were not free men from the hour when their prolonged interrogation terminated. There is no question of the proper grounds of their arrest or of their interrogation **???query?????? a cause of action for false improsonment from the end of that interrogation until they were subsequently brought before a Peace Commissioner. Mr. Binchy puts his theory of the commencement of the detention at 10 o'clock of the morning of the next day after their arrest because he does not attempt to make the case that a Peace Commissioner should have been summoned from his bed at four o'clock in the morning when the interrogation had ended to determine whether those men should have been remanded on bail or in custody. They were, however, brought into contact with a Solicitor who intervened on their behalf and were brought before a Peace Commissioner. No justification is brought for the imprisonment, beyond this, that the guards were entitled to detain those suspected of crime. But the question is, whether it is a justification for a prolonged detention or imprisonment to say that the crime was being...