The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions over a significant ruling potentially affecting thousands of drink-driving prosecutions.
The appeal involves matters of general public importance concerning the interpretation of legislation regarding presumptions about the integrity of evidence that potentially impacts thousands of prosecutions under the Road Traffic Acts, a panel of three judges said.
“This is also a matter of public safety on the roads,” Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne, Mr Justice Peter Charleton and Ms Justice Iseult O’Malley said in their published determination agreeing to hear the appeal.
Another issue on which clarity is required concerns the significance of chain of custody evidence in this jurisdiction, they said.
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The weight and admissibility of matters of evidence is a legal issue in multiple criminal trials and a question arises whether a Court of Appeal ruling concerning the weight to be attached to evidence in criminal trials applies to drink driving charges, they added. A further issue is whether a ruling of law during a District Court trial can be subject to judicial review.
A hearing date for the appeal will be fixed later.
The appeal concerns legal requirements governing the custody of blood and urine specimens taken from suspected drunk drivers up to the point they are transferred for analysis.
Because of a break in the chain of custody of a blood specimen taken from a man convicted of drink driving, the High Court’s Ms Justice Sara Phelan held last July he was entitled to an order overturning his January 2024 conviction and two-year driving ban.
Noting her decision identified an inconsistency in the law, she said it is for the State to identify how to address that.
The courts deal with up to 7,000 drink-driving prosecutions annually based on blood/urine specimens and the judgment has led to hundreds of cases being put on hold pending the Supreme Court outcome.
The case concerns a man whose blood specimen was taken at 00:37 on August 21st, 2022. The doctor who took it halved it into two glass bottles before sealing the bottles in separate containers labelled with the date and the man’s name.
The doctor sealed the containers, handed them to the arresting garda and completed a certificate, as required under section 15 of the Road Traffic Act 2010, relating to the taking and sealing of the specimen.
The man retained one container and the garda placed the second sealed container in a box with the section 15 form before sealing the box and posting it for analysis. The Medical Bureau of Road Safety certified the specimen contained a concentration of 126ml of alcohol per 100ml blood, over the legal limit of 50ml alcohol per 100ml blood.
During the District Court trial, the garda witness did not provide direct evidence about the whereabouts of the container before it was posted or about who had access to it.
In refusing a defence application to dismiss the case on grounds of failure to adduce such evidence, the District Court judge relied on a statutory presumption in other sections of the Road Traffic Act to the effect the section 15 certificate was proof of the facts stated in it unless the contrary was shown.
On appeal, the High Court ruled the statutory presumption did not extend to covering the chain of custody after the container was sealed. The Act requires the prosecution to provide evidence about storage of the specimen from when it was sealed to when it was posted for analysis to exclude the possibility of interference with the sample and the certificate evidence cannot cover the chain of custody in that regard, it held.
