The Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed Martin Joseph Sweeney and Michael Sweeney’s appeals against their criminal damage convictions, finding no basis to overturn the jury’s verdicts despite their acquittals on violent disorder charges.
The brothers had sought leave to appeal after a jury at Sligo Circuit (Criminal) Court found them guilty of damaging a red Opel Corsa on Temple Street, Sligo, on 25 June 2004. The jury found both not guilty of violent disorder. The appeal court heard the applications on 16 March 2007 and gave its reasons in a judgment delivered on 16 May 2007. It treated the applications for leave as the hearing of the appeals and dismissed them.
The prosecution case was that the applicants, together with David and Thomas Sweeney, took part in a violent attack on a car and its occupants, Edward McDonagh and Mary Sweeney. David and Thomas Sweeney had pleaded guilty to violent disorder; the Director of Public Prosecutions later entered a nolle prosequi on the criminal damage charge against them.
For the applicants, counsel argued that the jury’s verdicts were inconsistent. They submitted that the evidence on the two charges was effectively the same and that the jury could not find they participated in the attack on the car for criminal damage while acquitting them of violent disorder. They relied on the 1995 decision in Director of Public Prosecutions v Maughan, concerning when an appellate court may set aside inconsistent verdicts.
The court rejected that argument. It said violent disorder and criminal damage have different legal elements and the charges were not alternative counts. The trial judge had not directed the jury to treat them as alternatives. The court said the other two accused were in a different position because they had pleaded guilty to one charge and the prosecution had discontinued the other.
The judgment noted evidence that four men got out of a car, that McDonagh and Mary Sweeney’s car was damaged, and that at least one person pursued Mary Sweeney down the street. It was for the jury to assess the evidence and sequence of events, the court said. The verdicts were not necessarily inconsistent, and the applicants had not shown that no reasonable jury could have reached them. The court therefore declined to intervene in the convictions.