The mother of a little girl at the centre of a dispute with the DPP about a prosecution has welcomed the fact that he is seeking ways to explain his decisions. Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent, reports.
However, Mrs Ellen Heapes, whose four-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was badly injured last November when a car mounted the pavement and struck her, criticised the DPP for not alerting the family to the fact he was going to speak about the case on radio yesterday.
"I'm happy he has spoken out," Mrs Heapes told The Irish Times. "It's good if he is looking at ways to call families in and explain his decision to them. The Garda told us they were 100 per cent certain of a charge on this. A senior garda rang us up on it two weeks ago. Gardaí are telling us there's a lot of evidence and the DPP is telling us there is not. I was at the scene. There was a lot of evidence given to the DPP."
Elizabeth's father, Mr David Heapes, said there was forensic evidence in the car, and gardaí had assured them all along it was an open-and-shut case. He said there were a number of charges, including driving without insurance and public order offences, that could be brought.
He said they wanted to meet the DPP to discuss the case with him. "We don't want to discuss the case through the media." He said the DPP's office should have someone like a victim liaison officer to explain to families decisions like this.
The DPP, Mr James Hamilton, said yesterday he was examining ways to explain to victims why certain prosecutions were not being taken. He was speaking after the launch of two booklets on the role of the DPP, and what happens when people are called as witnesses in criminal trials.
Mr Hamilton told The Irish Times he had not given up on this case, but he had to make a decision on the basis of the evidence.
"You only get one go at it. I don't want to go off at half-cock. I took buckets of advice on this. When we got the file we made a decision, then that decision was reviewed, and then we took advice from a very experienced senior counsel. There's a very serious charge involved; dangerous driving causing serious harm. I would still hope to be able to bring a prosecution at a future date."
Launching the booklets yesterday, he said they are a response to the main type of queries coming into the office.
"In a minority of cases, no prosecution is taken," Mr Hamilton said at the launch. "The most common reason for this is where the evidence in a case is weak."
Explaining why he could not give reasons for his decisions, he said: "In many cases if I were to set out what evidence was or wasn't there, the accused would in effect be publicly tried without the safeguards he or she would have in a court of law."
Stressing that he could not engage in a media trial in the Heapes case by discussing the evidence available, he added that the question also arose as to why he could not be more open with victims about why the decision not to prosecute was made.
"The basic problem is that if I tell the victim in detail why the decision has been made and they repeat that in public, then it is the same as if I said it in public.
"I have to confess, however, that I am not at all comfortable with the present situation. I have embarked on the exercise of consulting my counterparts in other jurisdictions to find out what approach they adopt, and see if we can learn from their experience."
He said in Northern Ireland and the UK in particular, there was a practice of explaining the reasons for decisions to victims in certain cases, and he would look at their experience carefully.