The Court of Appeal has dismissed Thomas Folliard’s appeal against his conviction for sexual exploitation of a child, ruling that the trial was not unfair or unsatisfactory and that the verdict was not unsafe.
The appeal concerned the conviction only. Folliard had been convicted by a unanimous jury in the Circuit Court sitting in Castlebar on 6 July 2017. He was later sentenced to five years in prison, but the Court of Appeal said the judgment dealt solely with the conviction aspect of his appeal.
The case arose from an alleged encounter in Claremorris, Co Mayo, on 13 January 2016. The complainant, identified as P.K., was 13 at the time. He said a man followed him from a shopping centre and offered him money to have sex. The man allegedly offered €50; P.K. refused, and the man left.
The prosecution relied on CCTV from the shopping centre and nearby county council offices. The footage showed Folliard in the centre and, shortly after P.K. left, a person the parties accepted was Folliard moving in the same direction along Kilcolman Road. The court described the footage as providing a “continuum” and said it showed the complainant and Folliard close in time and place. It also noted a dispute over the complainant’s description: he had referred to a moustache and red cardigan, while the person in the footage wore a blue jacket, with a flash of red visible beneath it.
Folliard’s appeal raised three issues: the failure to hold an identification parade, the complainant’s answers in cross-examination, and the prosecution’s re-examination. The court acknowledged the importance of identification parades where identification is in issue, but said this was not a classic identification case. It concluded that a parade would have added little to the CCTV evidence and rejected the argument that the identification procedure was unfair or caused a miscarriage of justice.
The court accepted that the defence cross-examination had achieved considerable success and that leading questions in re-examination diminished the effect of some answers. It nevertheless held that the trial judge was entitled to find there was a case for the jury to consider. No objection had been made to the questions at trial.
The appeal court therefore dismissed the appeal against conviction. The five-year sentence was not the subject of the judgment’s decision.