The successful prosecution of three members of the family of Jozef Puska for withholding information concerning his murder of Ashling Murphy may encourage more such prosecutions, lawyers believe.
Withholding information prosecutions are very rare here, but a 2019 Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the relevant law – Section 9.1.b of the Offences Against the State Act – may have overcome any reticence by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to use it, a senior criminal lawyer said.
The outcome of the Puska family case could act as a deterrent to others against withholding information on serious crime, he added.
Jozef Puska is serving a life sentence for the murder of Ms Murphy (23), a schoolteacher, while she was out walking on the Grand Canal near her home in Tullamore on January 12th, 2022.
RM Block
This week, his partner Lucia Istokova was jailed for 20 months, and his brothers Marek Puska and Lubomir Puska jnr for two-and-a-half years, for withholding information in the immediate aftermath of the murder. The maximum sentence for that offence is five years.
The brothers’ wives were sentenced on the separate charge of assisting an offender arising from their burning of Jozef Puska’s clothes. Viera Gaziova (40) and Jozefina Grundzova (32), were jailed for two years and 27 months respectively.
The brothers and their wives were convicted last July after a jury accepted both brothers misled gardaí by failing to disclose crucial information when they gave witness statements, including certain admissions by Puska, and their wives burned his clothes to impede his arrest or prosecution. Istokova pleaded guilty before the trial to withholding information.
A landmark Supreme Court decision six years ago may have encouraged the DPP to proceed with the withholding information charge.
Delivered in 2019 on proceedings by Michael Sweeney against the State, the judgment addressed important issues about the balance between the rights of individuals to remain silent and the State’s role in preventing criminal offences.
Mr Sweeney, of Bog Road, Ballinrobe, Co Mayo, was questioned, but not charged, in relation to a criminal investigation into the killing of 23-year-old Tom Ward, who died on August 13th, 2007, after he was severely beaten outside his parents’ home in Sligo.
When originally interviewed by gardaí, Mr Sweeney was cautioned he had the right to remain silent and he said “absolutely nothing”, the Supreme Court noted.
He was not told his failure to respond to questioning could lead to a separate charge of withholding information. In 2011, he was charged under section 9.1.b with withholding information which might have led to the arrest or prosecution of another person in relation to the death of Mr Ward.
Before his trial, he took a successful High Court challenge to the constitutionality of section 9.1.b. The High Court found the legislation “makes silence of itself an offence” and was “impermissibly vague and uncertain”.
The State appealed and the Supreme Court upheld its appeal and reversed the finding of unconstitutionality. It said section 9.1.b protects the right to silence of any person who does not wish to speak about their own involvement in a crime and protects the right to silence where to speak would incriminate that person.
The section, it stressed, is expressly aimed at witnesses to crime or those who have information about a crime and is aimed at nothing else.
Legal sources said the section 9.1.b charge seemed particularly appropriate in the circumstances of the Puska family case. Other charges – the offence under section 8 of the Criminal Law Act 1997 of concealing another person’s offence, and the common law offence of perverting the course of justice – are more commonly brought and may be more appropriate depending on the circumstances of a case.
