The Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed appeals by Raymond Casey and Anthony Casey against their convictions for murdering Noel Pyper in Limerick in August 1997. In a judgment delivered on 14 December 2004, the court treated their applications for leave to appeal as the appeals themselves.
A jury at the Central Criminal Court had found both men guilty after a 20-day trial and they were sentenced to life imprisonment. The appeal court’s decision left those convictions and sentences in place.
Raymond Casey challenged the prosecution’s decision not to call or tender Dean Casey, a witness whose statements included conflicting accounts of the events. The prosecution said it regarded Dean Casey as unreliable. The trial judge declined to compel the prosecution to call him, but arranged for him to be available to the defence. Dean Casey refused to speak to the defence team and was not called. The appeal court found no evidence that the prosecution had acted from an improper motive and held that the trial judge’s handling of the issue was fair.
Raymond Casey also challenged the admission of his fingerprints and palm prints, and evidence identifying a palm print at the scene as his. The appeal court upheld the trial judge’s finding that the prints had been obtained under statutory authority and proper procedures. It rejected the challenge to evidence that the print was in blood, noting that the jury had evidence and exhibits before it and was responsible for assessing them. The court also declined to revisit allegations about his Garda interviews, which had been considered by the trial judge in a hearing outside the jury’s presence.
Anthony Casey challenged the admission of three statements he made while in Garda custody, when he was under 17 and accompanied by a care worker. The appeal court acknowledged technical breaches in recording conversations between the statements. The trial judge had excluded evidence of those conversations, but it was later put before the jury at the defence’s request. The appeal court concluded that the care worker’s presence preserved the substance of Anthony Casey’s rights and upheld admission of the statements.
He also argued that the jury should have received fuller directions on manslaughter and joint enterprise, and on a statutory offence relating to acts intended to impede another person’s apprehension or prosecution. The appeal court held that there was ample evidence on which the jury could find that the common enterprise included force intended to cause serious injury. It rejected these grounds and dismissed both appeals.