The Court of Appeal has rejected Bryan Ryan’s appeal against his conviction for the murder of Ian Tobin and affirmed the conviction.
Ryan was convicted in March 2013 after a 23-day trial. The case concerned the shooting of Tobin at a house in Fortlawn Park, Blanchardstown, in May 2007. The prosecution case was that Ryan drove a motorbike carrying the gunman to the scene; the gunman, a passenger carrying a shotgun, got off and fired through a window. The prosecution said the intended target was Tobin’s brother, Blake Tobin.
The appeal centred on admissions Ryan made during an interview in garda custody and whether they should have been admitted at trial. The prosecution accepted that admissions from two earlier interviews could not be used because Ryan’s requests for a solicitor had not been acted on. The trial judge admitted only statements from part of a later interview, after Ryan spoke by telephone with his solicitor. That call lasted less than 85 seconds.
Ryan argued that his access to a solicitor was inadequate and that the interviews, considered together, were oppressive, unfair and made his admissions involuntary. The Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge’s decision to admit the statements. It said the trial judge had heard the evidence and viewed all 15 interview recordings, and was better placed to resolve disputed questions about what happened in custody. The court also agreed that the earlier interviews did not make the admitted portion of the later interview unfair or misleading.
The court rejected Ryan’s other grounds as well. It upheld the refusal to hear evidence from a psychologist about the effects of interrogation and found no error in the decision not to delay prosecution witness Kevin Whelan’s testimony until after the hearing on the admissions. It also rejected challenges concerning the arrest warrant, the treatment of an interview exchange, the judge’s directions on accomplice evidence and the possibility of a manslaughter verdict.
The court concluded that it had not been persuaded the conviction was unsafe. It dismissed the appeal and affirmed the conviction. The judgment does not report a new sentence or any change to the sentence imposed at trial.