The Court of Appeal has quashed Brian McHugh’s robbery conviction, finding that the way a key witness was handled at trial may have created unfairness. The judgment does not direct a retrial in its concluding order.
The court heard that McHugh was convicted after a six-day trial on 9 June 2016 and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. He appealed the conviction. The case concerned an incident on 13 January 2014 at 326 Swords Road, Santry. The jury had also acquitted him of a separate charge of threatening to kill arising from an alleged Christmas Eve phone call.
The complainant, Megan Lawlor, testified that McHugh forced his way into her home, demanded a laptop and took her phone. She said he threatened and assaulted her and had a blade. These were allegations recounted in the appeal judgment, not findings made by the Court of Appeal.
A woman who was present, Annemarie Delahunty, had given Gardaí an interview account that differed in important respects from Lawlor’s testimony. Delahunty said the phone was given to McHugh, denied seeing a weapon and described trying to calm the situation. At trial, the prosecution and defence had agreed to ask the judge to call her so both sides could question her. The judge declined, saying the defence could call her. When the defence did so, Delahunty said she could not really remember the events, although she accepted that her earlier statement was correct.
The Court of Appeal said the trial judge should have explained in detail why he was rejecting the agreement and allowed counsel time to consider alternatives. It said the judge’s approach may have created unfairness and that the court could not say with confidence that the trial was fair. It did not decide a separate appeal ground concerning the use of Delahunty’s Garda interview under section 16 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006, because it was unnecessary to do so.
The court rejected McHugh’s argument that the guilty robbery verdict was perverse because the jury acquitted him on the threat charge. It said the jury could rationally distinguish the counts, pointing to the phone’s recovery from the car and McHugh’s interview statement that Lawlor probably gave him the phone out of fear. The court described that statement as tantamount to an admission to robbery.
The judgment concludes that the conviction is quashed. It does not state an order for retrial.