McDowell outlines plan for extensive changes to trial process
Mr McDowell outlined his plans yesterday as he attended the annual Garda Representative Association conference in Westport, Co Mayo.
Mr McDowell wants to introduce legislation where accused people will have to state in advance the type of defence they will offer.
“At the moment the jury has no reliable idea what the nature of the defence is until the case is over in most cases,” the minister said.
He gave an example where a jury might hear lengthy evidence about the scene of a crime, its preservation, the chain of evidence in relation to exhibits, and about the cause of death, but only at the end of the trial find out for the first time that the accused wasn’t contesting those matters. Instead, the accused could be basing their defence on a totally different issue such as wrongful identification or even provocation.
Mr McDowell also stated that admissibility of evidence, including confessions, is frequently decided in the middle of a trial and in the absence of a jury.
He said it wasn’t necessary to put 200 potential jurors to the inconvenience of attending the first day of a trial only then to have them whittled down to 12.
“The selection could be made in advance by a court officer using a random electronic or paper process at which the accused and the prosecutor would be entitled to attend,” Mr McDowell said.
He added that there also appears to be cross-party consensus for addressing the issue of re-opening cases where new evidence of guilt had come to light.
