The Supreme Court has dismissed Gavin Sheehan’s appeal against convictions arising from a 2016 shooting that seriously injured Ciara Sheehan, finding that no miscarriage of justice resulted from the trial judge’s errors identified on appeal.
Sheehan was convicted in the Circuit Court of assault causing serious harm and three firearms offences. The Court of Appeal upheld the convictions, while finding that the trial judge had wrongly refused to let Sheehan’s legal representatives withdraw. It dismissed the appeal after applying the statutory proviso that allows a conviction to stand where no miscarriage of justice occurred.
In the Supreme Court, Justice Iseult O’Malley concluded that Sheehan had not clearly chosen to represent himself. Although he wanted to dismiss his legal team on the first day of trial, he told the judge that he was still reviewing evidence and had no defence prepared. The Court found nothing to show that he wanted to take over his own defence. It therefore held that the Court of Appeal was wrong to find that his right to represent himself had been breached.
The Court also considered Garda use of section 18 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984, which permits juries in specified circumstances to draw inferences from a failure or refusal to account for an object, substance or mark. It held that Gardaí were entitled to invoke the provision about CCTV footage that they said showed Sheehan holding a handgun. His earlier descriptions of the object as possibly an imitation gun, a knife or a hook knife did not amount to an account, the Court concluded.
However, the Court held that the section did not apply to questions about messages found on a phone associated with Sheehan. The messages were admissible evidence in their own right, but electronically stored messages were not an “object” or a physical mark on one for the purposes of the section. The Court also considered that the messages’ meaning was clear and that they did not call for an explanation.
Despite that error, Justice O’Malley found no real possibility that Sheehan had lost a chance of acquittal. The jury could draw ordinary inferences from the messages and CCTV footage without the additional statutory inference. The Supreme Court therefore applied the proviso and dismissed the appeal. The convictions remained in place.