The State (Hunt) v O'Donovan

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Court: Supreme Court
• Judgment Date: 01 January 1975
• Docket Number: [1972.
• Date: 01 January 1975

(S.C.)

The State (Hunt)

and

O'Donovan

Appeal - Criminal law -Statutory right of appeal from court of limited jurisdiction - Procedural amendment of statute removing right inadvertently - Whether any right of appeal under Constitution - Equality before the law - Courts of Justice Act, 1924 (No. 10), ss. 31, 63 - Criminal Procedure Act, 1967 (No.12), s. 13, sub-s. 2(b) - Constitution of Ireland, 1937, Articles 34, 40.

The prosecutor signed a plea of guilty to a charge that he had committed an indictable offence and the District Court sent him forward for sentence with that plea to the Circuit Court pursuant to s. 13, sub-s. 2(b), of the Criminal Procedure Act, 1967. The prosecutor did not withdraw his plea and he was sentenced by the Circuit Court to a term of imprisonment. He failed in an attempt to appeal against his sentence because in the circumstances the effect of s. 13 of the Act of 1967 (unlike that of s. 3 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1951, which was repealed by the Act of 1967) was to make it impossible for him to establish that he had been "tried on indictment" as required by s. 63 of the Courts of Justice Act, 1924, in conferring a right to appeal from the Circuit Court to the Court of Criminal Appeal. In habeas corpus proceedings brought by the prosecutor in the High Court, he consented that his detention was not in accordance with the law. Held by Finlay J., in dismissingthe application, 1, that the provisions of sub-s. 4 of s. 3 of Article 34 of the Constitution do not confer a right of appeal from orders of courts of local and limited jurisdiction, and that the effect of sub-s. 2(b) of s. 13 of the Act of 1967 was not...