The Court of Appeal has dismissed John Reilly’s appeal against his conviction for demanding money with menaces, upholding the trial judge’s decisions to admit two Garda statements and leave the case to the jury. It also rejected an appeal concerning hearsay and prejudice. The judgment was delivered on 20 December 2022 by Ní Raifeartaigh J., with Edwards J. and Kennedy J. concurring.
The prosecution case concerned a visit to Linda Ring’s home on Christmas Eve 2017. Three men came to the door while she was there with her two young children and her partner, Declan Kavanagh. The prosecution alleged that Reilly was among them and that money was demanded in menacing circumstances over a debt attributed to Ring’s older son, Stephen.
Ring’s Garda statement, taken within hours, identified Reilly as one of the men and described a demand for €1,300. At trial, she said she did not know whether Reilly was there and that the man she remembered was not the man in court. The Court of Appeal held that this was materially inconsistent with her statement and found no error in admitting it under section 16 of the Criminal Evidence Act 2006. It said the statement was not unnecessary: it described what was said at the door, while Reilly’s interview account acknowledged being there but presented his presence as unrelated to the demand.
Kavanagh’s statement also named Reilly and described the exchange at the door. In court, Kavanagh said he could not remember much and had been drinking. The appeal court found a material inconsistency and upheld admission of the statement. It said the identification did not have to be removed as hearsay, given the statement’s account of Kavanagh’s familiarity with Reilly. The court said the trial judge should preferably have addressed Kavanagh’s explanation of intoxication explicitly, but concluded that the omission did not make the ruling erroneous.
The court also upheld the refusal to direct an acquittal. It ruled that the prosecution did not have to prove that the demand was actually communicated to Stephen. The evidence could allow a jury to find that the demand was made in circumstances apt to bring it to his attention, including because his mother had previously made repayments on his behalf.
On the final ground, the appeal court accepted that Ring’s assertion that Stephen owed Reilly a drug debt was hearsay when offered to prove the debt’s truth. But it found that reference to a drug debt did not make the conviction unsafe through prejudice. It held that the reported words at the door were not hearsay when used to show the alleged demand and menacing circumstances.
The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction and dismissed the appeal. It did not retry the case or make a new finding of guilt; the jury’s conviction remained in force.