A Supreme Court Judge today criticised the Gardai for failing to record interviews when he quashed the conviction of a man accused of killing his wife.
Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman said officers were not entitled to cherry-pick what they recorded in interviews with murder suspects.
"It is utterly unacceptable to omit denials," he said.
John Diver, a 64-year-old former British solider from Kilnamanagh Road, Walkinstown, Dublin was jailed for life five years ago for the murder of his wife Geraldine. She had been strangled in December 1996 in her car, which was parked outside a builder's yard in Clondalkin.
Diver went to the Supreme Court after the Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed his appeal in 2002.
Mr Justice Hardiman today quashed his conviction and directed a retrial on the grounds that the evidence given by Mr Diver's children in the case had not been correctly handled.
But in his judgment, he reserved his strongest criticism for the officers who interviewed Diver in Lucan Garda station on December 8th, 1996 He said their failure to record two out of five interviews that day was "a gross, deliberate and conscious breach of regulations".
"All of these persons are well known in the area of criminal investigation and all are competent, knowledgeable and experienced. There can be no question of inadvertence or ignorance as an explanation for their actions."
Diver did not admit guilt in any of the unrecorded interviews but instead repeatedly protested his innocence.
The prosecution later contended that he had ample motive for murdering his wife, who was planning to leave him and had been conducting a very active affair with a much younger man.
Shortly before her death, she told Diver that she wanted to change the terms of their separation agreement to ensure she got custody of their two children.
There was evidence from a teenager who claimed to have seen Diver in the back of his wife's car shortly before her death, but no forensic evidence implicated him and the evidence of his children did not place him at the murder scene.
Mr Justice Hardiman said there were significant issues about the Garda interviews, which should have been recorded in full to provide proper context.
"All this is trite, because it has been said so often and it is said so often because gardai have regularly avoided audio-visual recording, made selective notes, and breached the clear and simple regulations for the treatment of persons in custody, apparently believing that such breaches will attract nothing worse than a judicial rebuke."
He went on to say that under the Criminal Justice Act, gardai who breach the regulations for the treatment of persons in custody may be liable to disciplinary proceedings.
"Counsel on behalf of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), on the hearing of this appeal, was unable to say whether any such proceedings had ever been instituted."
Mr Justice Hardiman said it had been recently stated that 96 per cent of Garda interviews were now video-recorded. "I can only say that instances of such recording at anything like that frequency have yet to reach the appellate courts."
PA