‘I can’t do anything about it. The gardaí were out of time’

PEOPLE on the street shouted abuse at Judge Brian Curtin as he was escorted by gardaí from Tralee Circuit Court yesterday.

He remained impassive and declined to reply to questions from reporters as he was led down the courthouse steps and helped into a waiting Audi, which drove off immediately towards the town centre.

Judge Carroll Moran said people might consider the outcome to be “highly unsatisfactory”, but there was nothing could be done as the garda search of Judge Curtin’s home was carried out too late. The high-profile case collapsed following legal argument, with Judge Moran ruling that the seven-day search warrant had expired at the time it was used to search the Curtin home as part of Operation Amethyst on May 27, 2002.

The court agreed with Mr Curtin’s defence counsel, Patrick MacEntee, that the warrant had been executed on the eighth day and any evidence found in the house could, therefore, not be put before a jury. During the four-day hearing, Detective Inspector Thomas Dixon, of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, told of carrying out the search of the Curtin home with other gardaí.

In the absence of the jury, he said they took away a computer, some discs, storage devices and other material associated with child pornographic images.

Judge Moran indicated clearly that he was annoyed to have to preside over the trial of a colleague when the Director of Public Prosecutions should have known from the start that he (Judge Moran) would have to dismiss the case as the warrant was invalid at the time of the search.

“It may be considered a technical point, but one way or another the law has to be observed,” he told the jury, which did not hear any evidence during the hearing which was largely taken up with legal argument in its absence.

“If there’s no time limit (on warrants) it would mean that authorities such as gardaí and customs and excise could invade people’s homes at any time.”

For that reason, he said, the Supreme Court had ruled that time limits should be strictly adhered to. “Ultimately, this is for the protection of everybody so they don’t wake up and be taken out of their beds by some sinister people at a quarter to four in the morning,” he said.

Judge Moran said that the Supreme Court had said that evidence obtained outside such time limits could not be admitted unless it was done accidentally, or unintentionally or there were extraordinary excusing circumstances. The prosecution agreed there weren’t.

The search warrant was out of date and out of time and the law was abundantly clear, he said. “Many people might regard this as a highly unsatisfactory result. I can’t do anything about it. The gardaí were out of time.” An application for costs on behalf of the accused was turned down.