Judge Mary Devins this week adjourned a drink driving case until July 19 as she awaits a High Court direction on the issue of Garda statements. Judge Devins has put forward a case stated to the high court in regard to the issue of Garda statements that look to be formed from a template rather than written up individually by gardaí after incidents.
At Claremorris District Court this week, sitting in Kiltimagh, John Mulkeen of Crimlin, Brickens, Claremorris was contesting a drink driving charge against him. The court was told by Garda John Monaghan that on April 18 2010 he responded to a report of a car driving erratically in Ballindine at 11.10pm and when he responded he found Mulkeen in car pulled over at the side of the road with the engine running. He formed his opinion that Mulkeen was drink driving and arrested him and brought him to Claremorris Garda station where Mulkeen gave a blood sample which returned a reading of 243mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood.
In her cross examination of Garda Monaghan, Cathy McDarby raised a number of issues with his statement which was furnished to her. She pointed out that in his statement, Garda Monaghan mentioned that “the prisoner had good English and no interpreter was required”. She told the court that her client was a local person native to the area and there was no need to put that into the statement. She also pointed out that twice in the garda’s statement there were errors on the date mentioned.
Garda Monaghan told the court that he always put in the line about an interpreter being required or not in all his statements and that the error in the dates was a typographical error on his part.
Ms McDarby told the court that it looked to her that it was a case of the garda using a template to type the statement and that is why the errors occurred. Judge Mary Devins adjourned the case until July 19 to await the direction from the High Court.
