Court of Appeal overturns Mayo defilement conviction and orders retrial

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

The Court of Appeal overturned a man’s conviction for defiling a 16-year-old girl and directed a retrial, after finding that the trial judge crossed a line in comments to the jury. The three-judge court gave its ruling on Friday.

The man, who cannot be named to protect the complainant’s identity, had been acquitted of a separate sexual assault charge but convicted of defilement at a location in Westport. He was sentenced in November 2025 to two years in prison, with the final 12 months suspended; the custodial part was deferred while his appeal proceeded.

The appeal court said the jury should have been directed to consider separately the man’s claim that sex did not occur and his claim that he believed the girl was 18. It found the trial judge’s comments risked treating the second defence as a lie if the jury rejected the first, and deprived the man of a proper consideration of that defence.

The court rejected a separate appeal argument about the prosecution’s “Bart Simpson defence” remark, but allowed the appeal on the jury-direction issue. The man was remanded on continuing bail until early October, when the case was to return to the Western Circuit.