The Court of Appeal has dismissed Karl Vogelaar’s appeal against his conviction for two robberies at bookmakers in Drogheda, ruling that the trial judge was entitled to leave the case to the jury.
The judgment, delivered by Ms Justice Kennedy on 25 March 2021, concerned robberies at Tully’s Bookmakers in Wheaton Hall and Ballsgrove on 4 November 2016. Three masked men were involved in each raid. The court said about €1,600 was taken in the first robbery and €1,735 in the second. A gun was pointed at an employee in the first shop, a shot was fired, and the employee was struck. The raiders took the shop’s CCTV hard drive.
The getaway car was recovered about two hours later, approximately 700 metres from the robberies. It contained the hard drive, cartridge casings, a live round and two pieces of modified black legging. One piece had two holes and carried DNA matching a co-accused. The second, labelled AGB9, had no holes and contained a mixed DNA profile: about 90% was attributed to Vogelaar, with the remaining contribution from two other people.
Vogelaar’s appeal challenged the legality of his arrest and detention and the refusal of his application for a directed acquittal at the close of the prosecution case. The Court of Appeal dismissed the first ground at the hearing as unstateable. Its judgment addressed the second ground.
The defence argued that DNA on a moveable item did not establish when the legging was placed in the car or show that Vogelaar had been in the vehicle. The prosecution accepted that DNA was its primary evidence linking him to the offences. It argued that the proportion of DNA attributed to him and the surrounding evidence allowed a jury to infer that he had worn the item.
The appeal court said the DNA evidence had to be assessed alongside the item’s location and the other objects found in the getaway car. It considered the two modified leggings, the CCTV hard drive and the casings in combination, and found the evidence was capable of supporting a prima facie case. It did not determine the facts afresh or replace the jury’s verdict; it decided only that the trial judge had not erred by refusing to withdraw the case from the jury.
The court therefore dismissed the appeal against conviction. Vogelaar’s conviction on two robbery counts remained in place.