The Court of Criminal Appeal has quashed Dermot Laide’s manslaughter conviction over the death of Brian Murphy following a fight outside the Burlington Hotel in Dublin, but ordered that Laide be retried on that charge.
The court separately overturned Desmond Ryan’s conviction for violent disorder and ordered no retrial, while leaving Laide’s violent disorder conviction intact.
Brian Murphy died after being punched, pushed to the ground and kicked as patrons left Annabel’s Nightclub in the early hours of August 31st, 2000. The incident lasted perhaps 15 to 30 seconds. Laide, Ryan, Sean Mackey and Andrew Frame, then aged 18 or 19, were later jointly tried.
Laide was convicted of manslaughter and violent disorder. The appeal court found a serious problem with statements made by Mackey which implicated Laide in kicking Mr Murphy while he was on the ground. The prosecution itself had not alleged that it could identify who delivered the kicks, and the State Pathologist considered a kick more likely than a punch to have caused the fatal injury.
At trial, Laide’s name was replaced with “Mr A” in prejudicial passages of Mackey’s statements. However, questioning established that “Mr A” was neither Frame nor Ryan, creating what the appeal court described as a probability that jurors identified “Mr A” as Laide.
The court held there was a real risk those inadmissible allegations influenced the manslaughter verdict. It therefore found that conviction unsafe, although it concluded there remained sufficient possibility of a lawful conviction to justify a retrial.
Ryan succeeded on a different ground. Gardaí entered his family home in Cunningham Road, Dalkey, under a search warrant later found invalid. The appeal court held they had not entered for the independently stated purpose of arresting Ryan and therefore could not retrospectively rely on a statutory power of entry to arrest.
His arrest and subsequent detention were unlawful, making interview evidence obtained afterwards inadmissible. Without it, the court found insufficient evidence to sustain the violent disorder conviction and declined to order a retrial.