The Court of Criminal Appeal refused Sharon Collins leave to appeal her convictions for soliciting Essam Eid to murder three members of the Howard family, finding no basis to overturn the trial judge’s rulings on the grounds argued.
The judgment, delivered by Finnegan J on 19 October 2011, concerned counts 4, 5 and 6: solicitation to murder Robert Howard, Niall Howard and P.J. Howard. Collins had also been convicted on three conspiracy-to-murder counts, but the Director of Public Prosecutions indicated those appeal grounds were not opposed. The court said the application before it concerned only the solicitation convictions.
The court rejected challenges concerning disclosure of material from a US investigation known as the “Royston Affair”. The prosecution had made four mutual assistance requests, but US authorities declined to provide further material. The court held that reasonable efforts had been made and that the unavailable material did not make the trial unfair. It also noted that the defence had received hard-drive copies of computers seized in the United States and could have arranged their examination.
Collins also challenged the admission of evidence relating to suspected ricin found in Eid’s prison cell. The trial judge first ruled the evidence inadmissible after the defence could not obtain a sample for testing, then reconsidered the issue after hearing further evidence from prosecution witnesses. The appeal court found the judge could revisit the ruling in the circumstances and said no resulting unfairness had been shown. It accepted that the ricin evidence was relevant to the credibility of a prosecution witness, giving Collins standing to raise the issue.
The court upheld the trial judge’s treatment of John Keating’s account of Collins’s movements on 16 August 2006 as alibi evidence. It said the account placed her elsewhere at a particular time when the prosecution alleged she accessed a computer used to track a FedEx package. The court also found the jury had been adequately directed after an earlier challenge to the reliability of Keating’s travel evidence.
Other grounds concerned evidence given by a detective about whether Collins was at business premises when an email account was opened, the judge’s directions to the jury, and an email mistakenly included in a booklet given to jurors. The court considered the detective’s answer vague and said defence counsel had not renewed an objection after the judge failed to address it in a redirection. It found the mistaken email caused no prejudice, alone or cumulatively with the other complaints.
The court concluded that the jury directions were unobjectionable and refused leave to appeal on the grounds considered. The judgment does not determine the unopposed grounds relating to the conspiracy convictions.