The Court of Appeal has dismissed Michael Taylor’s appeal against his 2011 conviction for the murder of Paul Kelly, rejecting challenges to the evidence and to decisions made during the trial.
Taylor was convicted by a majority jury verdict on 14 November 2011. The appeal concerned 12 grounds, with argument focused on whether the trial judge should have stopped the case before it went to the jury and whether a buccal swab taken from Taylor in custody was properly admitted as evidence.
The prosecution case was circumstantial. It relied on DNA matching Taylor’s profile found inside a glove recovered about 80 metres from the shooting scene; phone records said to place a number linked by the prosecution to Taylor within the area covered by a Clontarf mast around the time of the murder; and evidence of a feud involving the Taylor family and the deceased’s family. The trial judge had excluded evidence of a firearm particle found on the glove.
The appeal court described the case as “quite a finely balanced one”, but held that the combined evidence could properly be considered by a jury. It said the trial judge was entitled to leave the case to the jury and rejected the argument that the evidence amounted only to suspicion. The court did not determine Taylor’s guilt anew; it reviewed whether the trial and conviction could stand on the grounds raised.
On the swab, Taylor argued that although he had been told an authorisation had been issued, he had not been told its grounds, as required by the relevant legislation. The court concluded that the information given to him had, in substance, informed him of the grounds and rejected the appeal ground.
The court also rejected challenges concerning the arrest warrant, the prosecution’s closing speech, phone charts, non-disclosure of two statements, jury directions and newspaper photographs of Taylor. It endorsed the trial judge’s decision not to disclose the statements after finding that identifying a person mentioned in them posed a real risk to that person’s life. The appeal was dismissed; the 2011 conviction therefore remained in place.