The Gazette 1987

46 / 342

GAZETTE MARCH 1 987
ALIBI NOTICES
The concept of the Alibi Not i ce is a new one in Irish
jur i sprudence, t hough as w i t h many other such novelties it
has been bo r r owed f r om legislation in the U.K. It was in-
t roduced into our l aw by the Cr iminal Just i ce Act 1 9 8 4 . The
aim of this Act was to revolutionize the Criminal Law in
Ireland.
By virtue of Statutory Instrument
No. 1 7/85 part of the Act came in-
to operation on the 1st March
1985. We are now told that the re-
mainder of the Act will come into
force at the beginning of 1987. It
is interesting therefore to examine
one section of the Act which has
been in operation since March
1985 and perhaps from that ex-
amination obtain pointers as to
how the balance of the Act may af-
fect the operation of the Criminal
Law in the future.
The provisions in relation to Alibi
Notices are contained in section 20
of the 1 984 Act. The effect of this
section is that in trials on indict-
ment an accused person cannot re-
ly on an alibi unless he has given
the prosecution "Notice of Par-
ticulars" of that alibi within the
prescribed time.
The first point to note is that the
new procedure only applies to trials
on indictment and therefore does
not apply to trials in the District
Court. Secondly whereas the word
alibi is not defined in the Act, sec-
tion 20 subsection 8 does define
what is meant by "evidence in sup-
port of an alibi". It means evidence
tending to show that by reason of
the presence of the accused at a
particular area at a particular time
he was not, or was unlikely to have
been at the place where the of-
fence was committed at the time
of its commission. There is to date
no Irish case law interpreting this
definition. The United Kingdom
cases, however, have strictly con-
strued the similar definition in their
equivalent section.1 In the United
Kingdom Notice need only be given
of alibis in relation to the place and
time of the commission of the of-
fence. It is not necessary therefore
to give notice relating to dates and
places unconcerned with the actual
commission of the crime even
though it may be a strong part of
the prosecution case that the ac-
cused was at a certain place at a
certain time. Examples from U.K.
case law will make this point
by
Michael J. Staines
(BCL, LLM), Solicitor
clearer. In R. -v- Lewis2 the accus-
ed was charged with receiving cer-
tain postal orders on a Wednesday.
It was part of the prosecution case
that the accused was in the vicini-
ty of a Post Office when similar
stolen orders were cashed by
others on the following Friday. It
was held that the accused could
adduce evidence in support of an
alibi for the Friday despite the fact
that notice had not ben given to the
prosecution. Similarly in R. -v-
Hassan3 the accused had been
charged that " . . . on dates bet-
ween July and August 1968 in
Cardiff he lived off the earnings of
a prostitute". Part of the Crown
case was that the police had seen
him in the prostitute's house on a
particular day. At his trial the ac-
cused had attempted to adduce
alibi evidence in relation to that
specific day. The trial judge refused
to allow him to do so on the grounds
that the requisite notice had not been.
served. It was held by the Courts
of Appeal however, that as the of-
fence charged was a continuing
one, related to no particular location
other than Cardiff, his proffered evid-
ence was not caught by the section.
The prescribed time limits for
service of the Notice of Alibi is set
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