High Court dismisses Alan Harte's challenge to SCC conviction and sentence

High Court reporters

Alan Harte has lost his High Court bid to set aside his conviction and 30-year prison sentence for his role in the kidnapping and attack on businessmen Kevin Lunney.

Harte (42) was tried and sentenced at the three-judge Special Criminal Court in December 2021 for committing serious harm to and falsely imprisoning the Quinn Industrial Holdings (QIH) director in 2019.

He challenged the constitutionality of a section of the 1939 Offences Against the State Act that permit a two-thirds majority verdict at the non-jury court and that an accused is not informed whether the court’s verdict is a unanimous or majority decision.

He claimed he was entitled to the same trial in a non-jury court as an accused would receive in a jury court. Without this, his treatment before the court was unfair and unlawful, he alleged.

In her ruling on Monday, Ms Justice Marguerite Bolger said a person tried before the Special Criminal Court does not enjoy a right to a “mirror image”of the trial process before a jury court.

Harte was not in a similar or comparable position to a person tried before the jury courts because he was subjected to a process provided for by article 38.3 of the Constitution, she said. This does not breach his constitutional rights to equality or to a trial in accordance with law, she found.

He does not enjoy a right to a similar five sixths majority verdict or to know about any dissenting decision, she said.

Ms Justice Bolger dismissed his judicial review challenge.

A Special Criminal Court judge said Harte, of Island Quay Apartments East Wall, Dublin, but now of Portlaoise Prison, had a “ringleader” role in the kidnapping of Mr Lunney at a yard in Drumbrade, Ballinagh, Co Cavan. He was tried alongside three other accused persons at the Special Criminal Court.