The Court of Criminal Appeal has quashed Colm Murphy's conviction for conspiracy to cause an explosion connected with the Omagh bombing and ordered that he be retried.
Murphy had been convicted by the Special Criminal Court on January 22, 2002 and sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. The prosecution alleged that he provided two mobile phones for use in a bombing operation which culminated in the August 15, 1998 explosion in Market Street, Omagh, killing 29 people and injuring more than 300.
A central part of the prosecution case consisted of admissions which Gardaí said Murphy made during detention in Monaghan Garda Station, together with mobile-phone records said to show movements and communications associated with the bombing.
During the trial, forensic examination revealed that part of one Garda interview note had been rewritten. The original version included a question and answer incorrectly linking Murphy's wife to Sheila Grew, a person Gardaí associated with another suspect. The Special Criminal Court found that Gardaí Donnelly and Fahy had altered the notes and had lied in evidence about doing so. It excluded their interview evidence but allowed the remainder of the prosecution case to continue.
The appeal court held that the trial court was entitled not to direct an acquittal immediately. However, once serious misconduct in the interview notes had emerged, the surviving Garda evidence required particularly careful scrutiny. The Court of Criminal Appeal found that the Special Criminal Court instead relied on speculative explanations unsupported by evidence when assessing whether the wrongdoing extended beyond the two officers.
A separate and independently sufficient error arose from the trial court's use of Murphy's previous terrorist-related convictions. Those convictions had not been properly admitted as evidence at the trial, yet the Special Criminal Court treated them as corroborative and as indicating that Murphy was likely to participate in terrorist activity.
The appeal court held that this significantly undermined the presumption of innocence.
Other challenges, including objections to Murphy's arrest, telephone records, Terence Morgan's evidence, corroboration and the lengthy interruption of the trial, were rejected. The conviction was nevertheless set aside on the two successful grounds and a retrial directed.