The Court of Appeal has quashed Paul Brannigan’s convictions for two assaults on Jason Saunders, who died after an incident outside a flat in Cabra, Dublin. The court will hear submissions on whether there should be a retrial on those counts; it did not order one in its judgment delivered on 3 March 2017.
Brannigan had been convicted by a unanimous jury verdict of assaulting Saunders by head-butting him, and by a majority verdict of assaulting him with a golf club. The jury disagreed on a manslaughter charge. The appeal concerned only the two assault convictions.
The Court of Appeal allowed both grounds of appeal. On the head-butting count, it held that the trial judge’s directions may have confused the jury about the self-defence test. The judge correctly told jurors to consider the threat from Brannigan’s point of view, but then said they could assess whether his belief was reasonable. The appeal court said that wording could wrongly suggest his belief had to be objectively reasonable, rather than honestly held. It could not rule out that the jury had been misled.
The court allowed Brannigan to rely on that ground despite the defence not having raised the issue after the trial judge’s charge. It said possible self-defence was central to the head-butting count and that allowing the omission to defeat the appeal risked a fundamental injustice.
The second ground concerned the golf-club assault. The trial judge had told the jury self-defence did not arise on that count because Brannigan’s case was that he had not hit Saunders with the club. The appeal court ruled that the jury should have been allowed to consider the defence. It noted Brannigan’s interview account that Saunders was advancing while threatening to throw a vodka bottle, and that Brannigan said he swung the club to protect himself. The court said the threshold for leaving self-defence to the jury was low and had been met, even though Brannigan had also said he did not think he made contact.
The judgment records that Saunders collapsed outside a shop and was taken to hospital, where he was declared dead. A post-mortem attributed his death to commotio cordis, a disruption of heart rhythm following a blow to the chest. The pathologist said a golf-club blow could have caused the chest injury, but agreed it could also have resulted from a fall onto a hard object. The appeal court’s decision addressed the assault convictions and the jury directions; it did not determine how Saunders received the fatal injury.