State must pay costs in landmark female genital mutilation case

The State must pay a couple’s costs in their successful application to have their wrongful conviction for the female genital mutilation (FGM) of their one-year-old daughter declared a miscarriage of justice.Their trial was the first of its kind in Ireland and was the subject of an RTÉ documentary late last year.The parents spent two years in prison before their convictions were quashed on appeal in 2021.A miscarriage of justice certificate was granted by the Court of Appeal last month. Judge Patrick McCarthy said newly discovered facts had been disclosed in expert reports.READ MOREThe matter was put back for a costs hearing after Brendan Grehan, barrister for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said he wanted the opportunity to take instruction and to consider the judgment. At the Court of Appeal on Friday Grehan sought a reduced costs order.Grehan said this was a straightforward miscarriage of justice application, but other issues had been raised that elongated the process, in particular the suggestion that the conduct of the DPP had “fallen below minimum standards” in this case.Grehan noted the Court of Appeal had dismissed any suggestion that the DPP had engaged in any kind of “abuse of process”.Hugh Hartnett, barrister for the appellants, said the couple’s legal teams had “facilitated the efficient progress of this case”.Judge Isobel Kennedy said the three-judge court was satisfied that matters highlighted by counsel for the DPP did not elongate matters. She said submissions and legal arguments had been “reasonably concise” and the court saw no reason to depart from the rule that “costs follow the event”.The husband and wife became the first people to be convicted of the charge in the history of the State, after a Dublin Circuit Criminal Court jury found them guilty in November 2019 of carrying out an act of FGM on their daughter at a Dublin address on September 16th, 2016. Both parents had pleaded not guilty.The parents told doctors that the injuries were caused by a fall on to a plastic toy, an explanation that was rejected by experts who gave evidence at the first trial.The now 43-year-old man and 34-year-old woman spent two years in prison before their convictions were overturned by the Court of Appeal in November 2021, after it found the trial had been “unfair” because of “serious and far-reaching inaccuracies” in how the mother and father’s testimony was translated to the jury.