Court reserves decision on Brian Meehan murder conviction challenge

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

Judgment was reserved in the Court of Appeal on whether Brian Meehan could pursue a miscarriage-of-justice challenge to his conviction for murdering journalist Veronica Guerin. He brought the application under section 2 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993, relying on alleged facts that were new or newly discovered. The proceedings were reported on 20 November 2015.

Hugh Hartnett, for the defence, said witness Marion Finnegan had placed Meehan’s accomplice Russell Warren in Naas on 26 June 1996. That was the day six shots were fired at Guerin’s car on the Naas Road. Warren testified against Meehan and joined the witness protection programme.

The defence said Finnegan had been unable to pick Warren out at an identification parade, and argued that none of the original trial’s legal teams knew about that failure. The disputed evidence featured in John Gilligan’s trial. Gilligan was cleared of Guerin’s murder and received a prison sentence for importing cannabis resin.

Paul Anthony McDermott, for the DPP, argued that nothing underpinning the application was new since the trial. He said the legal team could access every statement held at the garda station. According to McDermott, the identification parade received consideration during the trial on 10 June 1999. Leaving the evidence unused might have been a poor decision, he acknowledged, but that did not provide grounds for this appeal.

Hartnett maintained that both sides must have missed the failed identification. Had prosecutors known about it, he argued, they had a duty to disclose it to the court. He said the delay in raising the issue was irrelevant when considering an injustice.

McDermott argued that Meehan could have raised the issue at his first appeal in 2006. He also said the conviction rested on more than Finnegan’s testimony: telephone records indicated contact between Meehan and Gilligan, and there was further circumstantial evidence.