Boakye Osei and Kelvin Opoku lose rape conviction appeals

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

Boakye Osei and Kelvin Opoku lost their rape conviction appeals at the Court of Appeal, in a judgment delivered on 14 March 2022; their rape convictions followed an offence in Co Donegal in February 2015.

The men, who had pleaded not guilty, were each sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment in March 2020 after a Central Criminal Court jury found them guilty. Their appeals challenged the trial judge’s questions about the complainant’s intoxication, the use of video-link evidence and disclosure of mobile-phone material.

The Court of Appeal rejected the challenges. Its president, George Birmingham, said the trial judge’s disclosure rulings were considered and proper; the court also found no error in the questioning or video-link decision. It was not persuaded that the trial was unfair or that the verdicts were unsafe.