Enoch Burke’s mother Martina and his sister Ammi have lost appeals over two-week jail sentences they received for criminal contempt following disruptive scenes in the High Court earlier this year.
Both women served the two-week sentences after Judge Brian Cregan found them guilty in March of criminal contempt over their behaviour at a court hearing on February 20th.
The judge said they had engaged in “roaring and shouting” and “intense and venomous” interruptions during the hearing in a “paradigmatic” case of contempt.
The February hearing related to Enoch Burke’s challenge to the membership of a disciplinary panel convened to hear his appeal over his dismissal from Wilson’s Hospital School, Co Westmeath.
In May 2023, the High Court ruled that the school had validly suspended him from his teaching position and subsequently ordered that he be restrained from attending at the school premises.
The school suspended and later dismissed him over his conduct towards the then-principal Niamh McShane at a school religious event in June 2022.
The confrontation arose in circumstances where McShane had earlier requested teachers to address a student by a new name and with the pronouns “they” and “them”.
Enoch Burke, an evangelical Christian, has maintained that this request went against his religious beliefs and his constitutional right to freedom of religion.
He repeatedly breached the judge’s order to stay away from the school and spent more than 700 days in prison for contempt.
He returned again when the school resumed after summer but did not do so last Friday after the court the previous day once again ordered his immediate reincarceration for breach of the orders.
Following the scenes involving them in February, the High Court held an inquiry into whether Martina and Ammi Burke should be jailed for contempt.
In arguments against that application, Martina Burke said she was not interfering in the administration of justice because justice was not being administered in her son’s case.
Ammi Burke had argued, among other things, that she would not “sit silently by while constitutional rights are being denied or while lies are being told in court”.
After they were found guilty of contempt, the pair served their two-week sentences and their appeals over them were heard later.
On Thursday, the Court of Appeal dismissed their appeals.
Judge Tara Burns, on behalf of the three-judge court, said in their arguments in the appeal, the two indicated that their complaint ultimately was that procedural issues arose which rendered their trial for contempt of court an unfair trial which was not compliant with the Constitution or the European Convention on Human Rights.
The judge said they “went as far as submitting that the issue of whether they were guilty of criminal contempt was not an issue for determination by [the Court of Appeal]”.
This revealed a misunderstanding on their part of the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal in criminal appeals, she said.
The Court of Appeal has jurisdiction to affirm a conviction if it is of the opinion that a miscarriage of justice has not occurred, she said.
Having listened to the digital audio recording of the High Court proceedings, there was no question the High Court judge’s assessment of the conduct at issue as being capable of amounting to criminal contempt of court was correct, she said.
Ammi Burke argued that their actions were “speaking up”, the judge said. Their speaking could not be categorised as speaking up and they were shouting very loudly and continuously, she said.
The Court of Appeal judges were of the opinion that the procedural issues raised by the two did not render their trial unfair. It dismissed both their appeals against conviction and sentence.