The Court of Appeal has dismissed Martin McDonagh’s appeal against his conviction for obstructing or assaulting a garda, and confirmed the conviction. It rejected his argument that a juror’s family links to An Garda Síochána gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias.
McDonagh was convicted by a unanimous jury on 10 October 2012 and sentenced on 27 February 2013 to two years’ imprisonment, with eight months suspended. The appeal concerned information that came to the defence after conviction but before sentence: the juror’s father was a retired garda sergeant who had served in Sligo, and her mother had worked in a clerical role for An Garda Síochána.
The defence argued that the circumstances mattered because the alleged victim and prosecution witnesses were gardaí, most with Sligo connections. It said a fair-minded observer could consider that the juror might be influenced, consciously or unconsciously. The prosecution relied on an earlier case involving a juror who worked as a civilian clerk at a garda station.
The court said relatives of serving or retired gardaí are not barred by statute from jury service. The panel had been told about the allegation and the likely prosecution witnesses, all of whom were gardaí. If either legal team considered a more detailed direction necessary, the court said, it was for that team to ask the trial judge for one. Without such a direction, the juror was eligible and had not disregarded the judge’s advice.
The court accepted it was likely the defence would have used a peremptory challenge had it known the juror’s family background. It held that this alone did not justify overturning a conviction after the verdict. It also said that if the information had emerged during trial, the trial judge could have considered directions, taken no action or removed the juror; that possibility did not itself require appellate intervention after conviction.
A second ground concerned two episodes of CCTV footage that were not preserved. It was not pursued at the appeal hearing. The court said the issue had not been raised with the trial judge before the jury charge or by a request for further directions. It also noted that the defence’s engineering expert broadly accepted in cross-examination that the missing footage would not have advanced the defence. The court rejected that ground as well.
The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and confirmed the conviction.