The Court of Appeal has refused John Dundon permission to add a late ground to his appeal against his 2013 conviction for the murder of Shane Geoghegan, and dismissed the appeal after the remaining grounds were abandoned.
The proposed ground concerned recordings and transcripts of prison phone calls involving two prosecution witnesses, Christopher McCarthy and Lisa Collins, while McCarthy was in prison in 2011. Dundon argued that the material could have been used to challenge the credibility and motivation of key witnesses at his trial.
The court heard that Dundon’s former legal team had requested prison recordings before trial. The DPP’s office replied that the request was a matter for the Irish Prison Service. After Dundon changed legal teams, the request was not pursued. The recordings were obtained by gardaí in 2014 following a court order in a separate murder case involving Wayne Dundon and Nathan Killeen.
The Court of Appeal found that the recordings were not in the possession, power or procurement of the DPP during John Dundon’s 2013 trial. It concluded that the DPP had not breached its disclosure duty, either before or during the trial.
The court also considered whether the recordings might have helped the defence challenge the witnesses. It said there was already substantial evidence that the witnesses feared the Dundons and had grounds for resentment towards them. It was not persuaded that access to the recordings would have further assisted the defence in challenging their credibility or establishing animus.
At trial, the Special Criminal Court had treated the three principal prosecution witnesses—April Collins, Lisa Collins and Christopher McCarthy—as accomplices and warned itself about relying on uncorroborated evidence. The Court of Appeal said it did not think the trial court’s approach would have differed had it heard the disputed phone-call material.
The appeal hearing proceeded only on Dundon’s motion to add the new ground and, if that were allowed, the proposed ground itself. The Court of Appeal refused the motion, finding no basis to conclude that the trial was unsatisfactory or the verdict unsafe because the recordings had not been available to the defence. With the other grounds no longer pursued, it dismissed the appeal.