The Court of Appeal has dismissed appeals by Leszek Sychulec and Andrzej Gruchacz against their convictions for the murder and false imprisonment of Patryk Krupa in Athlone in June 2014.
The court, in a judgment delivered by Mr Justice Birmingham on 30 January 2018, held that both trials were satisfactory and fair and that the verdicts were safe. It dismissed each appeal. The judgment records no further order.
The appeals challenged evidence connected with CCTV footage from Collins’ Service Station and the testimony of witness Tomsez Jaromin. The court said the footage was of exceptionally high quality. It found no unfairness in allowing witnesses who had described one of the abductors as a distinctive, tall, heavily built man with bloodstained clothes to view the footage and comment on it. Sychulec had not disputed that he appeared in the footage, but challenged the witnesses’ use of it to identify him.
Gruchacz did not concede that he appeared in the footage. A prosecution witness had identified the man in the footage as one of the abductors but did not name him as Gruchacz. A proposed identification by an investigating detective had been excluded after a trial hearing. The Court of Appeal held that, in the circumstances, the jury could view the high-quality footage and make its own assessment. It said this was not a universal rule: a judge could exclude footage whose prejudicial effect outweighed its value, or refuse to leave poor-quality or fleeting imagery to a jury without other identification evidence.
The court also rejected Gruchacz’s grounds concerning Jaromin. At trial, Jaromin said he had heard a man accompanying Sychulec addressed as “André”. The appeal court treated this as evidence that the man had been addressed by that name, not proof that it was his actual name; it described the evidence as admissible but relatively insignificant.
Jaromin denied making part of a statement to Gardaí about being shown a passport photograph identified as exhibit EC1. The trial judge admitted that part under section 16 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006 after accepting the Garda’s evidence that Jaromin had made it. The appeal court said the application had been properly considered and the decision could not be impeached. It also rejected the claim that the way the trial proceeded had unfairly surprised the defence.
Sychulec’s appeal focused on identification from the service-station footage. Gruchacz challenged both the footage-based identification and rulings on Jaromin’s evidence. The court dismissed both appeals.