The Court of Criminal Appeal has quashed the conviction and nine-year sentence on a man for the rape of his daughter when she was six years old. The court ordered a retrial.
The decision was based on a six-year delay in prosecuting the case. The alleged offence happened when the girl was aged six and a complaint was made when she was aged 12. However, there was no prosecution until she was 18.
In 1999 the man, now in his fifties, was convicted by a jury at the Central Criminal Court and jailed for nine years.
Granting the man's appeal against conviction yesterday, Mr Justice Hardiman, presiding, and sitting with Mr Justice O'Donovan and Mr Justice O'Neill said it was a difficult case and the difficulty was not eased because, even at this stage, the information available was partial to say the least.
He said the man appeared to have passed up an opportunity to take judicial review proceedings seeking an order prohibiting his prosecution on grounds of delay. The DPP was contending the man could not take such proceedings now but the man's counsel, Mr Barry White SC, had argued that the information on which such an application might have been taken had only emerged during the trial, when a Garda witness set out reasons for the delay in prosecuting the case.
The nature of the delay was not down to the Garda and appeared to have been related to the papers being lost somewhere in the prosecution service, the judge said. No explanation for the delay was given to the man's solicitor before the trial.
In the circumstances, the court had an element of unease about the safety of the conviction and would quash it and order a retrial. The court also directed the man should be freed on bail pending the new trial.