Dalton, Re Application for Judicial Review (Northern Ireland) [2023] UKSC 36 (18 October 2023)
Citation: Dalton, Re Application for Judicial Review (Northern Ireland) [2023] UKSC 36 (18 October 2023)
Rule of thumb: Stare-decisis: If there is a suspicious death what happens if the Police do not conduct a sufficiently thorough inquiry to find the killer? This is a violation of the Article 2 Right to Life, however, if the death was longer than 12 years before the introduction of HRA 1998, then it is not covered by Article 2, so no new inquiry can be opened unless new ‘golden evidence’ is found.
Background facts: The facts of this case were that in 1989 Dalton was going in to check on his neighbour when a bomb exploded. The Police never made any serious enquiries to find out who was behind this.
Parties argued: Dalton’s daughter brought the case arguing that the lack of inquiry was a violation of Article 2 ECHR, the Right to Life, and the Police Service in NI breached section 6 in failing to investigate this.
The Police Service argued that as this this took place in 1989, and the HRA stated that people could only use it for 12 years before the date the HRA came into force, which was 2001, the case was technically time-barred.
Court held: The Court affirmed that the lack of proper investigation was indeed a violation of Article 2 ECHR, but they did confirm that it was time-barred. The Police Service in NI were not held in breach of section 6 & they were not ordered to investigate it all the years later. They further held that there was no new uncovered evidence that could spark the file to be re-opened & reinvestigated.
Ratio-decidendi:
‘343. Applying the rationalisation in McQuillan to the facts of this case, the “genuine connection” test is not met. This is because the time period between the triggering death and the critical date (2 October 2000) was outside the outer period of 12 years (albeit by only one month). But in any event, these facts are not such as to take the case outside the primary time period of 10 years. This is because, even accepting that the bulk of the investigative effort has (or ought to have) taken place after the critical date, the original investigation (by which we here mean the PONI investigation) was not “seriously deficient” (see para 320 above dealing with Issue 3).
344. Applying Finucane as modified by McQuillan, this case falls outside the outer reaches of the 12 year temporal limit and so (given that there is no question of the “convention values” test being satisfied in this case) the court does not have (temporal) jurisdiction. If a further reason is needed not to overturn past precedents or to depart from obiter dicta, it is that overruling the decision in Finucane and departing from the rationalisation in McQuillan would make no difference to the decision on whether there was a genuine connection in this case (and, moreover, the appeal would be allowed in any event given our decision - see para 324 above - on Issue 3)’.
Lord Burrows
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