THE case of two men who were convicted of assault and subsequently had their convictions quashed was described by the High Court Taxing Master yesterday as "a citizen's worst nightmare".
Mr James Flynn said the men, Mr Joseph Grogan and Mr Joseph Meleady, were wrongly convicted of a crime they did not commit.
The Taxing Master said the two assumed they were living in a democratic and just society in which the cardinal rules expected of such a society were flagrantly disregarded by the "very organisms" that were meant to protect the people.
He was giving his ruling on legal fees at the Court of Criminal Appeal, which quashed their convictions.
The two had been convicted in 1985 of assaulting Mr Eamon Gavin and causing malicious damage to his car at Cremore, Templeogue, Dublin, in February 1984.
Yesterday, Mr Flynn said that in this case it would appear that the citizen's right to liberty ranked low on the constitutional rights schedule, given the absence of mechanisms to exercise those rights.
He referred to a statement from the Department of Justice in 1993 about the request on behalf of the two men for a presidential pardon. He quoted the Government's statement that the Attorney General found no grounds that would justify the Government advising the President to grant pardons.
The Taxing Master said the lawyer for the two men did his very best to demonstrate to the Government that there were grounds that brought the convictions into question.
On the advice of the Attorney General, the Government was not satisfied that the grounds on which the lawyers sought a presidential pardon were satisfactory.
This made the work of the lawyers for the appellants far more difficult than it should have been. If there were no mechanisms to entertain a re examination of the case, then the decision must stand. In other words, the actual administration of justice was superior to the constitutionality of that or any justice.
There is no more serious a crime than one committed by the State against its citizens, and if there exist no checks or balances then we are faced with the makings of a dictatorship," said Mr Flynn.
In this case, two young men were identified in a courthouse by the accuser who had an opportunity of perusing photographs. The men, being in the courthouse, were easy prey and such a coincidence seemingly did not surprise the authorities.
"The State was indeed aware that evidence existed that made the convictions of the applicants unsafe and the State was prepared to shut their eyes and close their ears rather than upset the status quo and, in adopting such an approach, thereby sanctioned the continued imprisonment of two innocent young men," he said.
The Attorney General must have been aware of the existence of certain facts that brought into question the convictions but he had no alternative but to direct the two men's solicitor to hold off any action until he had in place the mechanisms that would allow a fresh investigation of the facts and evidence surrounding this case.
The Attorney General, as guardian of the public interest, had a responsibility to perform that function without fear or favour, without prejudice or bias.
The case itself did not merely involve the deprivation of liberty but rather a deprivation of a right to challenge that deprivation of liberty which went to the very heart of a system and the systematic indifference of those who were prepared to support, and even vindicate, their actions over the superior constitutional rights of the individual enshrined in the Constitution.
This miscarriage of justice was the first case of its kind to come before him for taxation.
The complexity of the Meleady and Grogan case, said the Taxing Master, turned specifically on a very vexed and difficult issue concerning disclosure.
The detailed analysis by their solicitor involved an extraordinary amount of work. An earlier fee of £180,000, which he had granted to the solicitor was increased to £230,000.
He allowed an £18,000 brief fee for each senior counsel and £12,000 brief fee for the junior. He allowed £3,150 per day for the senior counsel and £2,100 for junior counsel for each day they appeared in the case.