SIR ALASDAIR Fraser says he is growing tired of the “myth abroad” that as the North’s Director of Public Prosecutions he doesn’t explain why and how prosecution decisions are taken. “I’m losing a little patience with that because we are really trying to provide details and to be of assistance to people who have a proper interest in the decisions which we are making,” he says.
Sir Alasdair heads what he describes as the largest legal practice on this island. Over the past 20 years the system has evolved where explanations behind prosecutions are provided, he says. And that’s as it should be.
As DPP he drives the North’s Public Prosecution Service (PPS), a body formed four years ago that is responsible for deciding whether, where, how and why alleged wrongdoers should face the criminal prosecution service. He heads a staff of 600, 170 of them lawyers, a service that is responsible for all prosecutions in Northern Ireland.
The vast majority of the 55,000 cases that come under the scope of the PPS each year are dealt with by such means as a warning, a reprimand, or a day or days in the lower magistrates courts, or through no prosecution at all. But for some 1,700 people it could mean spending weeks in the Crown Court facing up to major charges such as murder, manslaughter, terrorism, armed robbery, rape or other indictable offences.
At 62 Sir Alasdair has been DPP for 20 years, witnessing the transition from conflict to peace. He was born in Scotland in 1946, moving with his family to Northern Ireland four years later. Married with two sons and a daughter he is faced with a loyalty dilemma each year when Scotland meet Ireland in the rugby. He resolves it by supporting whichever team wins.
He read law at TCD, in college with Mary Robinson, Shane Ross and barrister Joe Revington.
Probably the three most controversial cases that crossed Sir Alasdair’s desk in recent years were the prosecution of Christopher Ward in connection with the £26.5 million alleged IRA robbery of the Northern Bank in 2004, the murder of Robert McCartney in Belfast in 2005 and the case against Sean Hoey, charged in connection with the 1998 Real IRA Omagh bombing.
Sir Alasdair understands why there was public concern that there were no convictions in all three cases but puts forward explanations. The case against Mr Ward was, as he says, based on “circumstantial evidence, a tapestry of evidence” but the evidence that the police put together from witnesses didn’t correspond with the evidence available to the trial. The original police evidence did justify the case, he says.
“I am satisfied that the right decision was taken to prosecute and I am equally satisfied that the right decision was made when we terminated the proceedings.”
In relation to the 2005 murder of Robert McCartney he refers to how there was one truly independent witness, a woman known as Witness C who gave evidence of seeing the assault on Robert McCartney outside Magennis’s pub. But the judge, while praising her, felt he could not totally rely on her evidence and, according to Sir Alasdair, this happens.
But he stresses that during trial the judge rejected a defence application for a direction to stop the case which was “in effect ruling that, at that moment, a jury could properly convict”.
There is still huge anger that no one has been convicted for the August 15th, 1998, Real IRA bombing that claimed the lives of 29 people. The south Armagh electrician Sean Hoey was charged based, as Sir Alasdair said, on two strands of evidence: that there was “an association or authorship” linking him to the alleged making of other Real IRA bombs used in attacks in towns such as Banbridge and Portadown ahead of the Omagh attack; and that there was low copy number (LCN) DNA that directly linked him to the Omagh bomb.
The judge, Mr Justice Weir, was scathing of how the police handled the case, complaining that much of the forensic evidence gathered at the bomb scene was so contaminated that it was rendered useless. He also raised serious questions about the validity of LCN DNA, which allows for the forensic analysis of tiny amounts of DNA.
Sir Alasdair makes clear there is still a use for such evidence. “There may be cases where there are a number of factors which, taken together with low copy number DNA, would satisfy me that there is a case fit for prosecution.”
Sir Alasdair understands the fury and anguish of the Omagh families but points out that during the case the judge rejected a defence application to dismiss the charges. “In so doing, as a matter of law, the judge was saying, at that moment, it would be open to a jury properly directed by him to convict.” In such circumstances “it would have been very difficult to explain why a prosecution had not been brought”.
Overall though he says the conviction rate is high at 94 per cent of all cases. Of those contested in the Crown Court the acquittal rate is between 12 and 13 per cent.
One of the most recent high-profile cases was that of the sectarian murder of 15-year-old Catholic teenager Michael McIlveen in Ballymena three years ago. Four men were sentenced to life imprisonment. They were handed minimum terms ranging from 10 to 13 years. Sir Alasdair has now referred the case to the British attorney general Baroness Scotland to review whether the sentences were too lenient. Baroness Scotland could refer the case back to the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland.
One of the most controversial issues in Northern Ireland is that of informers. Sir Alasdair says there have been “very infrequent” cases where in the “public interest” informers were not prosecuted. “I have a responsibility to maintain and protect the lives of individuals and that is a controlling factor in the decisionmaking process.”
There were also instances, again under the public interest, where cases weren’t proceeded with to protect the “working methods” of the secret services.
Sir Alasdair makes the point that shortly after his appointment in 1989 he was “responsible to a substantial part in securing the appointment of John Stevens” to examine allegations of RUC and British army collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.
Five years later he requested Stevens should reopen his investigations arising from information that came to light over the prosecution of Brian Nelson, who as a British army agent had infiltrated the UDA.
Sir Alasdair acknowledges the concerns of the past but with devolution of justice powers believed to be relatively imminent wants to look towards a new criminal prosecution system that has widespread public support.
“This is a new service which is young and is seeking the confidence of the community in better circumstances, a service that is determined to serve all of the community in a proper way, and a service that is acting . . . with complete integrity and probity.”
