In the Irish Courts
| DOI | 10.1177/002201834100500207 |
| Date | 01 April 1941 |
| Published date | 01 April 1941 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
In the Irish Courts
COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEAL OF EIRE
MURDER:
ADMISSIBILITY OF A STATEMENT MADE BEFORE BEING
CHARGED
WITH
THE
CRIME
Attorney-General v. Fennell
THE
accused in
A.-G.
v. Fennell (No. I) ([1940], I.R., 445)
was a private soldier who shot his sergeant and was con-
victed of murder.
The
principal ground of appeal,
that
the
learned trial judge had misdirected the
jury
in charging them
on the question of the onus of proof of insanity, will be dealt
with at length in
our
next issue,
but
the first ground of appeal
was that astatement taken from the accused by a member of the
Civic
Guard
was wrongly admitted by the learned trial judge.
Since the accused's defence at the trial was
that
he was
insane at the time of the shooting, this statement was for
him of vital importance, for it was (in the words of the
Court
of Criminal Appeal) a " long
and
intelligent"
statement, the
substance of which was that he shot the sergeant in self-
defence. Counsel argued
that
the statement was wrongly
admitted on a charge
of
murder"
inasmuch as the accused
was then in the custody of the military authorities,
and
had
not been charged with the crime for which he was subsequently
indicted-and
could
not
have been, because the deceased
man was then
alive".
The
pith
and
substance of this objection
was, therefore,
"that
if the accused had been told
that
he
was to be charged with
murder
he might
not
have made any
statement"
(per Sullivan c.j., at p. 448).
It
was argued
that
the
case was analogous to one in which
the accused has made astatement after being charged with
aminor offence and is later tried for a major offence; in
which circumstances it has been said that the statement
cannot be used against him on the major
charge:
e.g.
A.-G.
v. Mary Skelly (69 Ir.T.L.R., 216), where astatement made
152
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