Aaron Ward’s hospital meat cleaver conviction quashed

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

The Court of Appeal quashed Aaron Ward’s conviction over an incident at a Galway hospital on 31 May 2018. He was admitted to bail, and the court was due to hear arguments the following week on whether a retrial was appropriate.

Ward pleaded not guilty at Galway Circuit Criminal Court to threatening to kill or cause serious harm and producing a meat cleaver at University College Galway’s Accident and Emergency Department. The incident took place on 8 February 2015. A jury found him guilty after a two-day trial, and Judge Rory McCabe sentenced him to six years’ imprisonment on 31 May 2017.

The report said Ward threatened to kill Charlie Ward while swinging a meat cleaver at him, Wayne Ward and Patrick Ward as they approached the hospital, and threatened them again inside. The three men later made statements to gardaí but sought to withdraw them.

At trial, Charlie Ward said he did not want to give evidence and had been on medication when he made his statement. Wayne Ward said he had been drunk and on tablets and that his statement was lies. Patrick Ward said he had been drunk when he made his statement and maintained that he had never seen a meat cleaver that night.

Mr Justice Alan Mahon said the statements were crucial to the prosecution case and almost certainly contributed significantly to the conviction. He found that the trial judge’s rulings had failed to engage with many requirements of section 16 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006, governing the admission of such statements. The deficiencies rendered the trial unsatisfactory.