The Court of Appeal has dismissed Sabrina Cummins’s appeal against her conviction for the murder of Thomas Horan, rejecting the substantial grounds argued at the hearing and finding that the remaining points did not undermine the safety of the verdict.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Birmingham on 23 March 2017, concerned a trial held in October and November 2015. Cummins was tried alongside her brother, Kenneth Cummins. The case arose from the fatal assault on Horan in his apartment at Cambridge Court, Ringsend, Dublin, on 6 January 2014. The judgment says the two accused were present when multiple serious injuries were inflicted.
The appeal focused chiefly on the refusal to hold separate trials, the trial judge’s handling of Kenneth Cummins’s guilty plea, and whether Sabrina Cummins had been improperly compelled to finish giving evidence.
The court upheld the decision to hold a joint trial. It said the prosecution case was that both accused were involved and that the jury could be directed to treat Kenneth Cummins’s account of an alleged sexual-abuse allegation as irrelevant to the case against his sister. The judgment records that Sabrina Cummins denied making such an allegation and denied any sexual impropriety by Horan.
During her testimony, Sabrina Cummins had declined to return to court to continue cross-examination. The trial judge warned her about possible consequences if she refused, after which she resumed her evidence. The appeal court said an accused could choose not to testify, but once she had begun giving evidence she had to remain available for cross-examination. It dismissed the challenge to the judge’s intervention.
Kenneth Cummins pleaded guilty while the trial judge was charging the jury. The appeal court accepted that the judge was right to tell jurors to put that plea aside and decide Sabrina Cummins’s case on its own evidence. It said the plea was not inconsistent with her defence that her brother alone was responsible, and that the judge was not required to endorse any argument either side might draw from it.
The court also considered subsidiary complaints about the jury directions and trial evidence. It concluded that none, individually or together, made the verdict unsafe, and dismissed the appeal against conviction.
The court separately considered a challenge to comments made by the trial judge at sentencing, which concerned the possible effect of those remarks on a future parole consideration. It did not replace the remarks, noting that the mandatory sentence itself was not challenged and expressing doubt that it was proper to critique remarks in those circumstances. The court said the remarks, read in context, were not as damaging as feared and noted that an appeal hearing had included a positive report about Cummins’s conduct in custody. The judgment’s final summary confirms the dismissal of the conviction appeal.