A member of the Burke family who was convicted of a public order offence will not face a retrial.
Jemima Burke (30), a sister of teacher Enoch Burke, was convicted of a public order offence on June 20th last year by Judge Vincent Deane in Ballina District Court, Co Mayo.
The conviction arose out of an incident on the same day where Ms Burke filmed the coroner and several Mayo University Hospital staff at lunchtime on the streets of Swinford, following an inquest into the death of a man who died from sepsis having attended the hospital.
A garda arrested Ms Burke, confiscated her phone and brought her to Ballina Garda station where she was detained in a cell for more than two hours. She was then charged with two public order offences relating to a breach of the peace. She refused to sign a bail bond.
RM Block
The District Court hearing was held that evening and she was fined €350.
Ms Burke argued she had been the victim of a “serious” miscarriage of justice as there was “excessive haste” in hearing the original case and no disclosure was made to her at her trial.
She challenged the decision in the High Court. The Director of Public Prosecutions said it was not opposed to the original conviction being quashed, but recommended it be sent back to the District Court for a different judge to hear.
In her written High Court judgment, Ms Justice Sara Phelan said Ms Burke was entitled to choose not to enter into a bail bond.
Had she entered into a bail bond, she would have been remanded in custody pending a hearing. Her constitutional right to a fair trial was an absolute one.
The judge added: “In preferring to not remand her in custody, and thereby conducting the trial on the same day on which the offence allegedly occurred, it is clear that the District Court judge fell into error.
“It seems to this court that the actions of the District Court judge were such as to deprive the applicant of her constitutional right to a fair trial and, that being so, the District Court ought not to have embarked on the hearing.”
The gardaí involved could have asked the judge to adjourn the matter with a view to ensuring Ms Burke’s constitutional rights were protected, but they did not do that.
“The District Court, whilst having jurisdiction to hear the case, did not have jurisdiction to embark on a peremptory hearing and therefore, the District Court acted in excess of jurisdiction from the outset, leading this court to the conclusion that the hearing was void.”
She concluded Ms Burke had suffered enough and the prosecution “cannot be acquitted of all the blame for some, at least, of what went wrong at the trial”.
However, the judge concluded that Ms Burke was not entitled to an award of compensatory damages.
She quashed Ms Burke’s original conviction and prohibited any further prosecution of the applicant in the District Court.
