The Court of Appeal has dismissed William Twomey’s appeal against convictions arising from an attack and robbery of machinery dealer Edward McAndrew in County Louth in December 2017.
The court ruled that the Special Criminal Court was entitled to find that Twomey had not effectively withdrawn from a joint enterprise before McAndrew was lured to a remote location, assaulted and robbed. The appeal concerned that withdrawal finding; the Court of Appeal did not retry the case.
Twomey was convicted by the Special Criminal Court in September 2021 of assault causing harm, robbery and making a demand with menaces. He received a two-year prison sentence for the assault and three years for each of the other offences, with the final year of those three-year sentences suspended. The sentences were ordered to run concurrently.
The prosecution case was that Twomey helped plan the scheme with others. The Special Criminal Court found that he recruited co-accused Tony Finglas and helped keep McAndrew interested in a supposed machinery sale by sending emails and photographs. Twomey accepted at trial that there had been a joint enterprise to extract money from McAndrew, but said his aim was to recover money he believed McAndrew owed another man. The trial court rejected that explanation.
Twomey testified that he became concerned about Finglas’s behaviour, told him to stop pursuing McAndrew and contacted Detective Garda Andrew Hayes and an unidentified member of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Hayes recalled a brief call around 2017 in which Twomey raised the possibility that McAndrew could be in danger. Hayes advised him to report it to police in Northern Ireland because the possible incident was outside the Garda’s jurisdiction.
The Special Criminal Court found those steps inadequate. It said Twomey had not directly warned McAndrew or given police enough information about the source and nature of the danger. It also relied on evidence that material from McAndrew’s stolen phone was later found in Twomey’s possession. The trial court concluded the joint enterprise remained in place when the offences occurred.
On appeal, Twomey argued that his warning to police and his alleged instruction to Finglas were reasonable steps to withdraw, given the stage of the plan and concerns for his own safety. The prosecution argued that his reports were vague and that he took no further steps after receiving no assurance that action would be taken.
The Court of Appeal said the legal test was not in dispute: withdrawal had to be clear and unequivocal, timely, and communicated to the other participants or police, with steps sufficient to undo or countermand the assistance already given. It found the Special Criminal Court’s factual conclusions were open to it on the evidence and saw no error in its analysis. The appeal was dismissed.