DC summons not served - still hanging over me?

GetBack01

Sorry to bother people here. I did something stupid (though very minor) about 1.5-2 years ago. No involvement of a Garda on the day in question and I just went on with life.

A few months later a Garda called me, asked for a statement etc which I duly gave, basically admitting the offence. I was nervous giving a statement as it was the first time I ever had any involvement. Before I said anything incriminating, I asked if I should get a solicitor as a confession would all but guarantee conviction if it went to court. I was told there are people who have been in there dozens of times and still haven't been brought to court so he doubted they would try to come down on me.

Anyway, I was told I'd hear back within a couple of weeks, never heard a thing. In the following months I moved abroad for work. A family member got a call looking for me about 7 months after the incident. I was asked to get in touch with this particular Garda but after multiple attempts I just got talking to the one I gave a statement to. He said don't worry and reiterated that nothing would come of it. I still heard nothing back and eventually he checked the system and said a summons had been issued. He couldn't really believe it himself either. Anyway, he said as I would be out of the country for long past the court date that nothing could come of it as it was far too minor for extradition (I believe it may not even have been an offence in the jurisdiction I was in). He said it would just expire and not get renewed.

Only other thing I ever heard was an attempted postal delivery by registered post to a family member's home which they rejected as they had no follow on address for me abroad. I had looked on Citizens' Information and saw that any postal service had to be at least three weeks' prior to any court date, which the letter would not have been anyway.

Months later again, and I now hoped to return to work in Ireland in a civil service job I was hoping to work in for some time, should the opportunity arise. Unsurprisingly, there is a background/record check. If I apply and succeed, will I just end up getting a rejection at that stage? Or will nothing show up unless it has been renewed?

I already have felt so much shame about this that only a tiny handful of people know, so I would really rather if people don't slate me any more than I already have myself.

Thanks.

tedpan

GetBack01 wrote:

Only other thing I ever heard was an attempted postal delivery by registered post to a family member's home which they rejected as they had no follow on address for me abroad. I had looked on Citizens' Information and saw that any postal service had to be at least three weeks' prior to any court date, which the letter would not have been anyway.

Very strange that someone would refuse delivery unless you told them to? I know my postman basically signs for post for me..

drunkmonkey

Have you checked there's not a warrant for your arrest after you didn't turn up in court, there probably is. It could have went ahead in your absence depending on the charge so there may be a conviction for something.
Get a solicitor and possibly a barrister involved and maybe look at having the case run in court again.

GetBack01

tedpan wrote: »

Very strange that someone would refuse delivery unless you told them to? I know my postman basically signs for post for me..

Was a registered letter and the family member just said I was abroad so the postman said he would return it or something to that effect. It was registered so I guess that prompted it.

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Have you checked there's not a warrant for your arrest after you didn't turn up in court, there probably is. It could have went ahead in your absence depending on the charge so there may be a conviction for something.
Get a solicitor and possibly a barrister involved and maybe look at having the case run in court again.

Well according to Citizens Information if you're not served, there is no obligation to show up. It was also posted too late any way as it needs to be 21 days before the court date, which it wasn't. I have since entered the country and left again and nothing happened, so I think that indicates there's no warrant? I have a feeling the garda was not trying to nail me as he was genuinely in disbelief that a summons had been issued.

All I am wondering now is will this stay on my record as pending for the foreseeable future? Or if the Gardaí don't renew it (as the Garda indicated they wouldn't), then will my record be clean again? All the info says you cannot be convicted if you are never served, so I don't think I was convicted in abstentia.

NUTLEY BOY

drunkmonkey wrote: »

SNIP.... It could have went ahead in your absence depending on the charge so there may be a conviction for something.

Could this happen if a defendant was not served with the relevant summons first ?

Even if a case proceeded without a summons having first been served properly I would expect any conviction to be vacated / quashed on the basis that is defective as it breaches the principle of audi alteram partem .

I would expect that a trial in absentia might only occur where the relevant proceedings had been served on the defendant who then knew of the case but elected to ignore it.

If a defendant is deemed to have been served validly I think that the audi alterem argument does not fly as there is no denial of the right to be heard.

Could OP's solicitor check with the District Court office as to how the matter was disposed of i.e. what orders were made.
Once that is known OP's solicitor could then guide him on what, if indeed anything, needs to be done.

nuckeythompson

Depends on the offence, statute of limitations may apply
What was the offence ?
Once you dot receive the summons there is little they can do

drunkmonkey

NUTLEY BOY wrote: »

Could this happen if a defendant was not served with the relevant summons first ?

Even if a case proceeded without a summons having first been served properly I would expect any conviction to be vacated / quashed on the basis that is defective as it breaches the principle of audi alteram partem .

Yea happened to me lost my driving license for around 4yrs, I knew nothing about it was driving away happily all the time.
Case had to be reheard after they went about arresting me and was thrown out. Once I went for a setaside it halted the trip to portlaoise prison.
Seemingly as I never turned up in court I was deemed not to have a licence or insurance so that's how I got disqualified. Would have been nice if the guards told me about turning up in the first place. It was a thing of nothing in the end but crazy how it can happen.

GM228

GetBack01 wrote: »

...he checked the system and said a summons had been issued.

Many summons are issued by hand, it is possible that one was delivered to your last known address and this has been overlooked, in this case service is only required 7 days before a hearing.

If it was sent via registered post the statutory declaration of service is filled when posted, not delivered and this must be done 21 days before a hearing. When such declaration is made by those who posted it service is deemed good.

NUTLEY BOY wrote: »

Could this happen if a defendant was not served with the relevant summons first ?

Happens often enough where the accused states they didn't get the summons and they fail to rebut any presumption that they did.

NUTLEY BOY wrote: »

Even if a case proceeded without a summons having first been served properly I would expect any conviction to be vacated / quashed on the basis that is defective as it breaches the principle of audi alteram partem .

I would expect that a trial in absentia might only occur where the relevant proceedings had been served on the defendant who then knew of the case but elected to ignore it.

If a defendant is deemed to have been served validly I think that the audi alterem argument does not fly as there is no denial of the right to be heard.

Could OP's solicitor check with the District Court
office as to how the matter was disposed of i.e. what orders were made.
Once that is known OP's solicitor could then guide him on what, if indeed anything, needs to be done.

Assuming there is a valid statutory declaration of service of summons then you only have 21 days from date of the knowledge of the case or summons to seek a set aside at the District Court.

nuckeythompson wrote: »

Depends on the offence, statute of limitations may apply
What was the offence ?
Once you dot receive the summons there is little they can do

The Statute of Limitations does not apply to criminal proceedings.

GetBack01

Statute of Limitations does not apply, yes, but I think it has to be filed within six months when it is a summary offence. Garda made contact 7+ months later but of course summons could have been issued long before that.

All this talk about solicitors etc. is far beyond what this reached. As mentioned in my OP, he said give a statement and basically said solicitor not needed as 'nothing would come of it'. When he finished recording he even said 'now for these never to be opened again' about the disc recordings.

Is there any way I can check my record without it bringing the issue back into the spotlight? I'm already leaning towards not applying for the job but all the mentions of in abstentia conviction is making me even more concerned! I was never even told the time/location the Garda just said it is in (month) and you'll still be working abroad so nothing can come of it. It would seem shockingly unfair I was subsequently deemed served based on that, I would have thought.

drunkmonkey

Contact the Garda involved or the station with the date you made the statement if you remember. You could also just pay a solicitor, it's not going to cost a fortune to put your mind at ease.

GetBack01

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Contact the Garda involved or the station with the date you made the statement if you remember. You could also just pay a solicitor, it's not going to cost a fortune to put your mind at ease.

It's not the cost I'm worried about it's that they'll try to renew the thing and pursue it again.

If that wouldn't be the case I'd be happy to contact them...

Always Tired

How do you know the letter wasn't at least 3 weeks prior to the court date if you never opened it or any other summons with a court date on it.

That letter was almost certainly the summons. What else could it have been?

And if they called to the same family member's house looking for you 7 months later, that's probably because you didnt show up to court.

They have 6 months to send the summons out and when I had to go to court they sent it 5 months and 3 weeks after the alleged offense (though it said on the summons it had been applied for only 4 months after, it was 5 months 3 weeks when the letter arrived by reg post) My solicitor said they do this all the time. My opinion is it's by design to make you think you're in the clear.

The court date was about 7 weeks after I got the letter, 8 months after the alleged offense. I'm thinking the letter came, got refused, court went ahead and when you didnt show they called to the house looking for you.

I wouldn't buy for one second the guard telling you over the phone nothing would come of it. The guard who arrested me told me he wasn't going to arrest me and drove me home (to see if I lived where I said) and then still sent out the summons all those months later. In my experience they are not to be trusted, ever, no matter how sound they seem to be.

You said he was 'in disbelief a summons had been issued'... yeah, pull the other one. The thing I was brought up for was ridiculous but no matter how pathetic it is if they think they can get a conviction out of it they will try. Him playing dumb to you on the phone is just that. My advice is if your charged with a crime don't bother trying to sort any of it out by speaking to a guard in between arrest date and trial date, those are the only 2 dates they give one f**k about anything to do with you.

They don't do favors, they want to get convictions and get promoted. If you abscond they can just show up and get that conviction without having to say a word why would they tell you anything.

Maybe they wouldn't pursue you overseas but either the conviction or warrant will be waiting for you should you return. Not that they'll grab you at the airport (dunno how that works) or are hunting you down Tommy Lee Jones style but basically you decided to run away from this rather than face up to it then and unfortunately, Johnny Law doesn't forget. And he can be a very vindictive son of a gun.

If you think you can come back and start going for jobs with gardai vetting I think you need to rethink that. When people move abroad for work they can have their solicitor go to court and get the case put back until they can travel back for it, but they have to come over and deal with it at some point. This is just going to look like you fled to avoid prosecution.

Perhaps as your man said it would expire and not be renewed but like I said, I wouldn't necessarily trust what they say. These things dont disappear usually though, might depend on how serious the charge was.

GetBack01

You've got the timeline a bit mixed up. I gave the statement three months after the offense, heard nothing in the meantime and they only tried to contact me 7.5 months later. The post to a family member was about a year after the thing.

Also I did not run away. When first asked for a statement I told the Garda that I was due to leave the country three weeks later. Flights etc were all booked well before I was ever contacted. I was told I'd be contacted before leaving and only heard of the summons 7.5 months after the offense, when I was still abroad.

So if I can't trust anyone how do I find out if there is anything over me?! I guess I can't? Or could I just apply for the job and if successful see if anything shows up on the background check? Hmmm

tedpan

What happened OP? Can you give us some idea of what you did. Is it worth a conviction/court etc?

Always Tired

Well if they told you nothing would come of it and yet they still charged you what does that tell you?

I'm not accusing you of running away, I'm trying to get you to understand how courts work and how they view things. You don't have to take my advice on board. I'm not a legal expert by any means. But out of the two of us only one has been to court

I know you want the whole thing to have disappeared, hopefully it has.

But just to give you some perspective, about 10 years ago a girl I know crashed her car into a sign when she was driving home after a party. She got the car off the road with the help of a friend who came out after she rang him and he drove her home. Guards came to her house hours later, they knew she had likely been over the limit but couldn't charge her for it. She went to court and got a 50.00 euro fine for damaging the sign. She later needed gardai vetting for a job. It came up as a hit and run with a 500.00 euro fine. Which made it sound like she had hit a person and fled the scene. This 'typo' was surely an accident and not done to screw her over because she had gotten away with drinking and driving, yeah?

I know you said you talked to this person and that you were told this and that, and you didn't get the summons etc. That's grand, I believe you. But I've seen boys in court saying all these things and the judges never believe it and moreover they take a dim view of people who they suspect didn't show up and take responsibility for whatever they were done for. Just having your mother tell the guards you don't live there any more and the postman taking the letter away doesn't make the charge go away.

Hopefully the thing really did expire and wasn't renewed.But don't be surprised if what a guard tells you turns out not to be true. Go through a solicitor and find out if you have a warrant before bothering to go for a job you need vetting for. Why the hell would you want to wait and see if it comes up after you were successful? Then you'll get 2 pieces of bad news, first that you have a legal issue to sort out, and second that the legal issue cost you a job you would have otherwise gotten.

Always Tired

tedpan wrote: »

What happened OP? Can you give us some idea of what you did. Is it worth a conviction/court etc?

Whatever it was doesn't matter. They sent a summons. That means they thought it was worth going to court over. and it doesn't have to be a serious charge for that to be the case, it depends on the guard, some are more desperate/pathetic than others

GetBack01

Always Tired wrote: »

Whatever it was doesn't matter. They sent a summons. That means they thought it was worth going to court over. and it doesn't have to be a serious charge for that to be the case, it depends on the guard, some are more desperate/pathetic than others

Yeah I'm not going to bother saying what it was. It doesn't get us anywhere.

I should mention that the Garda who seemed "sound" wasn't the same as the Garda handling the issue initially. Basically when I was first contacted (ie. Before I gave the statement and while still in the country) the Garda asked me if I could be in the following day. I was working in a different part of the country and thus could not return until the weekend. That meant the statement was given to a different Garda. This explains why he could be surprised something was issued. He just took the statement and told me he would leave it for the Garda in charge of the issue, but said he couldn't see him pursuing something this small.

I think the best thing might just be to give them a phone call and see where it has gone at this stage.

robman60

Well according to Citizens Information if you're not served, there is no obligation to show up. It was also posted too late any way as it needs to be 21 days before the court date, which it wasn't. I have since entered the country and left again and nothing happened, so I think that indicates there's no warrant? I have a feeling the garda was not trying to nail me as he was genuinely in disbelief that a summons had been issued.

If you're sure the service was after the 21 day limit then I am pretty sure you should not show up, unless there is subsequent valid service by hand. If that never happened at your known address then you should not have been convicted in abstentia.