A nine-year ordeal for former nun Nora Wall ended yesterday when the Court of Criminal Appeal declared a miscarriage of justice in relation to her wrongful conviction for the rape and indecent assault of a young girl in a care home in Co Waterford.
Ms Wall may now sue the State for damages.
After hearing of a "forensic debacle" leading to the 1999 conviction of Ms Wall, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns said the three-judge court believed Ms Wall "should not have to wait a moment longer than necessary" to hear the court's decision. It will give detailed reasons for that decision at a later date.
The judge said newly-discovered facts in the case, including that a crucial witness at Ms Wall's trial, Patricia Phelan, had admitted to gardaí and another nun, Sr Mona Killeen, that she had lied about having witnessed Ms Wall hold down a young girl while a man raped the girl - showed there had been a miscarriage of justice.
Immediately after the court's decision, Ms Wall, with her hand outstretched, approached Ms Phelan. A tearful Ms Phelan threw her arms around Ms Wall and hugged her.
Earlier the court heard the DPP had accepted that, had he been aware, prior to the arrest and prosecution in 1996 and 1997 of Ms Wall and the late Paul (Pablo) McCabe, of significant information which had since come to light, the prosecution could and would never have been brought.
That information included a statement by Ms Phelan of having lied about having witnessed Mr McCabe rape Regina Walsh, while Ms Walsh was being held down by Ms Wall, then Sr Dominic, in St Michael's childcare centre at Cappoquin, Co Waterford. Ms Phelan said that she had never witnessed such an event, that "it never happened" and she had made it up to "get back" at Ms Wall, whom she alleged, had beaten her.
Yesterday's proceedings arose after the June 1999 convictions of Ms Wall and Mr McCabe were overturned in July 1999 by the Court of Criminal Appeal, with no opposition from the DPP. Both had been convicted of the rape of Regina Walsh on a date between January 1988 and December 1989, when the girl would have been aged between nine and 11 years, and on an indecent assault charge. Mr McCabe was jailed for 12 years. Ms Wall was jailed for life.
In November 1999, the DPP accepted fully that Ms Wall and Mr McCabe were entitled to be presumed innocent of all charges brought against them, and said then he would not be seeking a re-trial. The DPP also regretted "the errors" in the handling of the case by the prosecution.
Yesterday, John Rogers SC, with Hugh Hartnett SC, for Ms Wall, said "aamplitude of evidence" of "quite extraordinary" newly-discovered facts showed the 1999 trial of Ms Wall had resulted regrettably from "a forensic debacle" and was never the trial the DPP intended.
The defence had since 1999 come into possession of significant new evidence, including that gardaí had advised from 1997 that Ms Phelan, a crucial corroborative witness on whose evidence the jury relied to convict Ms Wall, was an unreliable witness.
Although the DPP had directed she not be called as a witness, she was called through "inadvertence". Senior counsel for the DPP had advised she be called and he and others had failed to recall the DPP's directive.
The defence also subsequently learned Ms Phelan had made allegations of sex offences against another man, and the High Court in that case had said it did not find her evidence credible.
After the court was told Ms Phelan stood over her April 2001 statement in which she said she had lied about witnessing a rape of Ms Walsh, Mr Justice Kearns said the court could accept Mr Rogers's version of events as correct.
