A man jailed for 13 years in connection with an armed robbery at a bank in Co Tipperary yesterday won his appeal against his conviction and sentence on grounds relating to remarks by the trial judge which, the Court of Criminal Appeal found, breached the law on the right to silence.
The three-judge court granted a retrial in the case of Mr Larry Cummins (31), Dunnes Street Flats, Dublin. Mr Cummins was freed on bail pending the retrial, subject to certain conditions, including surrendering his passport and signing on at Store Street Garda station three times weekly.
Mr Cummins was convicted in May 2002 of robbery and carrying a firearm with criminal intent. The charges arose from the theft of £15,760 at the Trustee Savings Bank in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, on May 5th, 1998.
Mr Cummins was arrested and charged with the robbery. There was no forensic evidence linking him to the crime scene or to any of the exhibits produced at the trial. The case against him was based on a statement purportedly made to gardaí and a memo of an interview with him.
Among his 15 grounds of appeal was a submission that his privilege against self-incrimination was breached in the course of the trial by rulings of the trial judge and comments in his charge to the jury emphasising Mr Cummins's failure to account for his movements.
Granting the appeal yesterday, Ms Justice McGuinness, presiding and sitting with Mr Justice O'Neill and Mr Justice Murphy, said aspects of the trial judge's charge to the jury where he had made remarks about Mr Cummins' failure to account for his movements, were in clear breach of the law relating to the right to silence of detained persons.
In a previous case the Supreme Court had held that persons detained under the Offences Against the State Act retained the privilege against self-incrimination or the right to silence.