Special Criminal Court’s focus is on organised crime

While Sinn Féin has called for its abolition, and a range of human rights organisations has condemned its existence, the Government remains fully committed to the use of the non-jury Special Criminal Court.

The court is used for prosecuting both terrorist offences and those involving gangland crimes such as Friday’s murder at the Regency Hotel in Whitehall.

The Constitution empowers the Dáil to establish “special courts” when the “ordinary courts are inadequate to secure the effective administration of justice and the preservation of public peace and order”.

Save for these special courts, and military courts, the Constitution states, people have the right to have criminal charges against them heard by a jury.

The Offences Against the State Act 1939 was passed against the backdrop of the second World War and provided for the establishment of a Special Criminal Court to hear cases where there was a threat to State security.

IRA bomb attack

In 1972, against a backdrop of the Provisional IRA’s campaign, the Government made use of the 1939 act to establish the special court. During its time in the old courthouse on Green Street, near the Dublin markets, the courthouse was itself the subject of an IRA bomb attack.

Since the PIRA ceasefires the court has been spending more time hearing cases involving organised crime, though it continues to hear cases involving so-called dissident republicans.

The court is used because of the capacity of organised criminal gangs to intimidate witnesses and jurors so that ordinary courts might no longer function.

“Scheduled offences”, which generally involve subversive crime, are heard by the court as a matter of course. However, the Director of Public Prosecutions, through a power delegated from the Attorney General, can certify that other charges are heard there too, on the grounds that the ordinary courts would not be able to secure the effective administration of justice.

Usually the court is presided over by three judges, one each from the High Court, the Circuit Court and the District Court. In 2004 the government passed an order providing for the establishment of a second Special Criminal Court but the order was not used until October last year.

Seven serving judges have been appointed to the second court and it is expected to begin hearing cases in the next law term.

Backlog of cases

Key to the decision was the backlog of cases, especially gangland crime cases, that had built up. As Minister for Justice and Equality Frances Fitzgerald told TD Clare Daly last year, the establishment of the second court does not necessarily mean more cases will be referred to the court but rather that cases will be dealt with more quickly.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties was critical of the Government’s decision.

“The Special Criminal Court was created as an extraordinary court in extraordinary times; however, no reasonable person could today claim that there is a public emergency threatening the life of the nation,” its executive director, Mark Kelly, said last October.

The UN Human Rights Commission has repeatedly called for the court’s abolition.

Among the more high- profile trials heard by the court were those of the criminals who killed the journalist Veronica Guerin. Martin McGuinness and Martin Ferris were convicted of IRA membership in the court. The senior IRA member Thomas “Slab” Murphy is currently awaiting sentencing by the court, having been found guilty of tax offences after a lengthy trial.