The Supreme Court will hear an appeal by Barry Doyle against a Court of Appeal decision upholding his conviction. It granted him leave to appeal in a determination delivered on 28 October 2015.
Mr Doyle was convicted in the Central Criminal Court on 15 February 2012. The Court of Appeal, in a judgment delivered by Ryan P. on 8 June 2015, found no error in the trial court's judgment. That followed a voir dire, a hearing on the admissibility of evidence, which ran for eleven days.
The case centres on admissions Mr Doyle is alleged to have made in his fifteenth Garda interview. The Director of Public Prosecutions told the Supreme Court he spoke to his solicitor for about 25 minutes before those admissions. The DPP said neither Mr Doyle nor his solicitor asked for the solicitor to be present during questioning.
The Supreme Court said the Court of Appeal's decision "involved three matters of general public importance". It gave leave on those three issues. The first is whether a detained person is entitled to have a solicitor present during interview, or whether that is a concession by Gardaí.
The second is whether Mr Doyle can rely on the Supreme Court's decision in DPP v Damache, delivered on 23 February 2012, eight days after his trial ended. Mr Doyle challenged a search warrant issued under section 29 of the Offences Against the State Act, 1939, for entry to his home on 24 February 2009. The Court of Appeal did not consider that ground because it was not raised at trial.
The third is whether certain facts amounted to threats or inducements to confess, and whether any such effect had gone by the time of the admissions, as the trial judge held.