The Court of Appeal has dismissed D.C.’s appeal against his murder conviction, ruling that the trial judge was entitled to admit evidence about an alleged threat made a week before the fatal shooting and the deceased’s reported state of mind.
D.C. was convicted of murder after an 18-day Central Criminal Court trial in July 2015. He had pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter on the basis of provocation. The shooting itself was not disputed. His case was that the deceased made an inflammatory remark about D.C.’s sister as they left a stable yard after a proposed fistfight, causing him to lose control. No one else said they heard the remark.
The appeal challenged the admission of accounts from the deceased’s son, widow and brother about events on 8 December 2013. The son and widow told the trial that the deceased had reported being threatened by D.C. at a Dublin pub and had appeared frightened. The brother said the deceased called him from the pub, then said D.C. had threatened to shoot the deceased when D.C. later visited his home. According to the brother, D.C. added that he was “only messing”. The accounts were disputed at trial, including in relation to phone records and differences between the brother’s evidence and his earlier statement.
The Court of Appeal distinguished evidence offered to prove that the alleged threat was true from evidence offered to show what the deceased had said and his state of mind. It held that the trial judge could admit the reported statements for the latter purpose, including as relevant to whether the deceased might have made the alleged remark at the yard a week later. The court considered the short interval, the family circumstances and the fact that D.C. had a firearm at the yard when assessing that relevance.
The court also rejected the challenge to the brother’s account of D.C.’s alleged threat, finding it relevant to intention and to the provocation issue. It rejected a separate objection to the widow’s evidence describing the deceased as upset and frightened, holding that this was evidence of demeanour rather than expert opinion. Two other appeal grounds, concerning jury directions on provocation and the accused’s lies, were not pursued.
The court said the jury had been directed that the reported statements were not admitted to prove the truth of what the deceased said, but to show that he said it and his state of mind. It concluded the evidence should not have been excluded for its potential prejudicial effect in the circumstances. The appeal was dismissed on all grounds. The Court of Appeal did not conduct a new trial or make a new finding on the disputed events; the murder conviction remained undisturbed.