Alan Cawley’s murder appeal dismissed by Court of Appeal

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

The Court of Appeal dismissed Alan Cawley’s appeal against his murder convictions in a judgment delivered by Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy on 16 December 2019.

Cawley was convicted on 25 July 2017 of murdering John (Jack) Blaine and Thomas Blaine. The elderly brothers were killed in Castlebar on 10 July 2013.

Cawley pleaded not guilty to the murders at his arraignment. He later admitted unlawfully killing the brothers. His defence was that a mental disorder had substantially diminished his responsibility, making him guilty of manslaughter rather than murder. No formal plea of guilty to manslaughter was entered.

The proceedings were reported on 16 December 2019.

Cawley argued on appeal that the trial judge had failed to direct the jury adequately on the Director of Public Prosecutions’ burden of proof concerning intoxication. The judgment said Cawley bore the burden of proving diminished responsibility on the balance of probabilities.

The Court of Appeal found no error in the judge’s directions. It held that the jury had been clearly told the issue they had to decide and that intoxication was excluded as a mental disorder.