The Court of Appeal has refused Brian Meehan’s application to set aside his conviction for the 1996 murder of journalist Veronica Guerin, finding that the material relied on was disclosed and its significance appreciated by his legal team by the time of his appeal.
Meehan applied under section 2 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993, which allows a convicted person to seek an order quashing a conviction on the basis of new or newly discovered facts said to show a miscarriage of justice. The court said the application did not establish such facts and dismissed it. The judgment concerns this application; it does not set aside or revisit the earlier conviction.
The murder took place on the Naas Road on 26 June 1996. Meehan was convicted of murder and other offences after a 31-day Special Criminal Court trial in 1999. The prosecution case was that he drove the motorcycle from which the shots were fired. The conviction had been upheld on appeal in 2006.
The application focused chiefly on evidence from the later trial of John Gilligan, who was acquitted of Guerin’s murder in 2001. Meehan’s lawyers argued that evidence concerning witness Marion Finnegan, an identification parade, and Michael Hickey’s account of wearing a green jacket could undermine the trial court’s reliance on prosecution witness Russell Warren. Meehan also relied on evidence from other witnesses and on telephone records.
The Court of Appeal found that the material had been available to the defence. Records showed that statements, including those of Sergeant Michael Kearney and Hickey, had been disclosed or inspected, and the defence had specifically requested copies of several statements. The court said the telephone records were the same records available at Meehan’s trial and that arguments about their interpretation could have been raised on appeal.
The court also noted that Meehan’s appeal submissions had referred to Finnegan’s evidence, Hickey, the failed identification parade, other witnesses from the Gilligan trial and telephone evidence. Although a motion to introduce transcripts from the Gilligan and Paul Ward trials had been filed, it was withdrawn at the 2006 appeal hearing. The court accepted appeal counsel Patrick Gageby’s account that the decision was made in consultation with Meehan, and rejected the suggestion that counsel had misunderstood the relevance of a Supreme Court decision in the Cronin case.
The court said the application had shifted from alleging non-disclosure to criticising the performance of Meehan’s lawyers, but found no evidence establishing that the material was withheld or that its significance was missed. It concluded that the material did not meet the statutory test for new or newly discovered facts and refused the section 2 application.