The Court of Appeal has refused Boy B’s application to introduce fresh expert evidence in his appeal against his conviction for the murder of Ana Kriégel.
The court ruled only on the application to admit new evidence. It did not determine the appeal itself or the other proposed grounds, which were left to be addressed at the appeal hearing.
Boy B was convicted on 18 June 2019 after a trial in the Central Criminal Court. His original appeal challenged, among other matters, the trial judge’s handling of his father’s evidence, the refusal to admit evidence from psychologist Dr Colm Humphries, and the exclusion of certain Garda opinions during an interview.
In a motion dated 2 March 2022, Boy B sought to add grounds concerning the refusal to put manslaughter to the jury, the absence of a corroboration warning, and the safety of the conviction in light of material said to be unavailable at trial. He also asked to present reports from Professor Susan Young and Professor Gísli Guðjónsson about his Garda interviews when he was 13.
The reports, commissioned after Boy B’s current solicitors came on record, criticised aspects of the interviews and the work of Dr Humphries. Guðjónsson’s report argued that Boy B’s mind had been substantially overborne by what it described as the interviewers’ “heavy and relentless challenges”. The application was opposed by the Director of Public Prosecutions, who argued that the legal test for admitting fresh evidence had not been met.
The judgment records that the interviews had not been challenged at trial on grounds of voluntariness. Boy B did not give evidence about coercion, and his trial position was that he had initially lied but later gave a true account in which he was an observer, not a participant. The court also noted that his mother and solicitor had been present during the interviews and that he later gave a friend a similar account of his presence and observations.
The judges said the application sought to replace the way the defence had run the trial with a different case more than three years later. They agreed with the Director that it fell well short of the principles governing fresh evidence and refused the application.