Prison officer wins appeal in assault case

The Supreme Court has ruled that disciplinary proceedings cannot be brought against a prison officer who was acquitted after a criminal trial on charges of assaulting an inmate in Mountjoy Prison.

However, the three-judge court stressed its decision was based on the circumstances of the case of Alan Garvey (35). It was not stating that disciplinary proceedings cannot be brought in every case of an acquittal in criminal proceedings.

On the particular facts and circumstances of Mr Garvey's case, which was essentially an internal dispute between prison officers, fair procedures required that the jury's acquittal of him not be reopened by a disciplinary inquiry, the court held.

The proceedings arose after a disturbance among prisoners in Mountjoy on September 18th, 1999. One of the offending prisoners, Colm Fogarty, sustained a broken jaw and it was alleged by some other prison officers that those injuries were caused by Mr Garvey kicking Fogarty in the face. The prison investigated the matter and Mr Garvey was suspended for a period.

He challenged the lawfulness of that suspension in the High Court but, before his case was heard, criminal charges were brought against him in relation to the assault on Fogarty.

The High Court action was settled in May 2001 on terms which left Mr Garvey open to bring a further challenge to the disciplinary proceedings.

The five-week criminal trial ended in March 2002, with the jury acquitting Mr Garvey on two charges of assaulting Fogarty.

After that trial, Mr Garvey failed to have his suspension lifted and in April 2002, the governor of Mountjoy instituted disciplinary proceedings against him and other officers.

The proceedings against the other officers were abandoned after they took High Court proceedings.

The High Court refused to stop the disciplinary proceedings against Mr Garvey and he then appealed to the Supreme Court.

Giving the Supreme Court's judgment, Mr Justice Hugh Geoghegan stressed an acquittal on one matter does not necessarily bar a disciplinary inquiry involving the same matter.

However, he ruled, it may, in certain circumstances, be oppressive and unfair to conduct a disciplinary inquiry into the same issues in respect of which there has been an acquittal on the merits at a criminal trial.

In this case, he said, there was a simple issue of credibility - whether Mr Garvey had inflicted the injuries sustained. However, the resolution of that issue was anything but simple and the trial took five weeks, with the jury deliberating for 16 hours.

The judge said it would be basically unfair to conduct a disciplinary inquiry into what were in effect identical allegations to the criminal charges based on essentially the same evidence and the same witnesses.

On that ground alone, he would allow Mr Garvey's appeal.