Gerard Hayes loses appeal against murder conviction

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

Gerard Hayes lost his appeal against his murder conviction in the Court of Appeal. The appeal and a related motion were heard on 25 January 2018, and Mr Justice Edwards delivered judgment on 26 June 2018.

A Central Criminal Court jury had convicted Hayes of murdering John Robinson on 18 March 2003. The prosecution case was that Hayes stabbed Robinson while Robinson was a guest at Hayes’s mother’s home.

Hayes told Gardaí that Robinson had thrown a bottle at his head before the stabbing and that the knife belonged to Robinson. At trial, Hayes said he had tried to grab the knife after being hit but could not remember what happened next. The defence argued that provocation was a partial defence, which the jury rejected.

Hayes first sought to appeal in 2012. He argued that missing parts of the trial transcript denied him a fair appeal. He also sought to add a ground challenging the trial judge’s direction that a not-guilty verdict was not open to the jury.

The Court of Appeal dismissed both the appeal and the motion. It found that the partial transcript, which included all the evidence, was sufficient for Hayes to appeal properly. The court considered the trial fair and the conviction safe.