The Court of Appeal has restored for jury consideration CCTV identification evidence excluded before the trial of a man charged with murdering Lisa Thompson. The court said the reliability and weight of the proposed identification are for the jury to decide; it did not determine whether the footage shows the accused.
The prosecution alleges that Thompson was murdered at her home in Ballymun, Dublin 11, on 9 May 2022. The accused denies the charge. The case is due to be heard by a jury, and the appeal concerned a preliminary ruling on evidence admissibility, not the trial’s verdict.
Two Garda officers, Sergeant Michael Harkin and Detective Garda Cathal Connolly, testified at the preliminary hearing that a man shown on CCTV near Thompson’s home was the accused. The trial judge excluded their proposed identification, citing their involvement in the investigation, their prior knowledge that the accused was a person of interest, and concerns about how and when they recognised him. The judge also ruled that no inference could be drawn from the accused’s failure to account for his presence at a location identified as Location 1.
The prosecution appealed under section 7 of the Criminal Procedure Act 2021. The Court of Appeal said the trial judge had wrongly treated concerns about the officers’ prior knowledge and the recognition process as grounds to exclude the evidence. Questions about whether the officers expected to see the accused, how they knew him, and how confidently they identified him could be tested in cross-examination and assessed by the jury, the court said. It found no basis in law for requiring Garda witnesses to be independent of the investigation.
The court stressed that its decision was limited to the evidential ruling. It did not decide that the officers’ identification was accurate or reliable, nor did it assess the accused’s guilt. It said the proposed evidence was potentially significant in the prosecution’s circumstantial case and met the statutory test for appeal, while leaving credibility, reliability and weight to the jury.
The Court of Appeal ordered that the identification evidence be restored for the jury’s consideration. The judgment does not determine the murder charge.