The Court of Appeal has dismissed Michael Murphy’s appeal against his conviction for assaulting Laura O’Callaghan in Cork, finding that an inadvertent reference to previous convictions did not make the trial unfair.
Murphy was convicted by a jury in the Circuit Criminal Court in Cork on 13 April 2015 of assaulting O’Callaghan on Grand Parade on 17 February 2014. He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment the following day. The appeal concerned the conviction, and the Court of Appeal dismissed it.
The appeal arose after O’Callaghan was asked about previous convictions during cross-examination by counsel for a co-accused. She replied: “Your clients have previous convictions as well.” The court noted that counsel for that co-accused said his client had no previous convictions, leaving the jury with the implication that Murphy and another co-accused had them.
Murphy’s counsel argued that the remark caused fundamental unfairness and that the trial judge should have discharged the jury. The Director of Public Prosecutions opposed the appeal, arguing that the case turned on identification: whether Garda Kevin McCarthy and O’Callaghan had correctly identified Murphy as the person who struck her outside the Soho Bar on Grand Parade.
The Court of Appeal said the trial judge had broad discretion in responding to the inadvertent disclosure of bad-character evidence, and that appellate courts should generally be reluctant to interfere with that discretion. It described the evidence about previous convictions as having “limited significance” in a case that turned on identification, primarily by Garda McCarthy.
The court did not criticise the defence for waiting until the following day to seek the jury’s discharge, after the prosecution withdrew four other counts relating to alleged events on the day after the Soho Bar incident. It concluded that no injustice arose from the trial judge’s refusal to discharge the jury and dismissed the appeal.