The Court of Appeal has dismissed Feri Anghel’s appeal against his conviction for murdering Ioan Artene Bob, rejecting challenges to the evidence and to the trial judge’s directions to the jury.
Anghel was convicted by a Central Criminal Court jury on 14 April 2022 after a 31-day trial. The appeal court’s judgment, delivered on 19 April 2024, considered four grounds. A challenge concerning phone-record evidence had been withdrawn before the appeal hearing.
The prosecution case relied on circumstantial evidence. CCTV and witness identifications placed Anghel and Bob together in Dublin city centre before they travelled to Tallaght by Luas shortly after midnight on 13 April 2018. Bob was found badly injured in Sean Walsh Memorial Park that morning and died in hospital later that day.
The prosecution also relied on CCTV showing a man identified as Anghel using Bob’s bank card at an ATM in Tallaght, and on evidence from co-worker Garofita Selin. She told the trial that Anghel said he had been drinking with a friend, had hit him after the friend said something he disliked, and could not remember what happened. She also described blood around his nails and marks on his hands and boots. The defence challenged her reliability and argued that the evidence did not establish that the friend was Bob.
The appeal court held that the trial judge was entitled to leave the case to the jury. It said the evidence, considered as a whole, could support a conviction and was not so weak that a properly directed jury could not convict. The jury had also been entitled to assess CCTV clips in which the people shown could not be identified directly, alongside footage and witness identifications from other points in the journey. The court found no unfairness in admitting the CCTV compilation and rejected the privacy challenge.
The court also dismissed arguments that the jury needed further directions about DNA evidence and evidence said to be missing from the Garda investigation. It described unidentified DNA on cigarette butts found in the public park as neutral on whether Anghel was involved; it did not connect the unidentified smoker to the assault. The court said the appellant had not shown that the witnesses who were not interviewed could have provided material evidence or created a real risk to the fairness of the trial.
The appeal against conviction was dismissed. The judgment did not reconsider the jury’s verdict at a retrial; it decided that the grounds raised did not justify setting aside the conviction.