The Court of Criminal Appeal has refused Michael Joseph Kelly’s application to quash his 1983 murder conviction, ruling that newly discovered post-mortem photographs did not put the safety of the conviction in question.
Kelly was convicted by a jury of murdering Margaret Glynn, 87, at the cottage she shared with her brother Martin near Ballinamore Bridge, Co. Galway, on 15 November 1981. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and later released on licence. His earlier appeal was refused in 1984.
The application, under section 2 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993, relied on newly discovered material concerning the medical evidence and the confession Kelly made to gardaí. The court also allowed an additional ground based on a third booklet of post-mortem photographs that had not been supplied to the defence at trial. It said there was no suggestion the photographs had been withheld deliberately.
Experts disagreed about what the photographs showed. Dr Basil Purdue said decomposition made it unsafe to diagnose bruising in the neck and that the cause of death should have been recorded as unascertainable. Professor John Crane said the photographs alone could not confirm bruising, but considered other evidence supported bruising to the head and jaw and did not exclude neck compression. He said there was no evidence of a natural cause of death or that Glynn was alive when the fire began.
The court accepted the photographs as newly discovered facts. But, considering them alongside the other photographs, the body’s position, the original post-mortem evidence and the appeal testimony, it found they would have been of little benefit to the defence. It said neck bruising could not be excluded and found a sound basis for the conclusion that discolouration to the skull and jaw was bruising. The court said further questioning of the original pathologist about the missing photographs would not have cast real doubt on his cause-of-death diagnosis.
The court also considered CUSUM linguistic analysis, which Kelly’s expert said indicated that two or more people had contributed to the confession. The respondent’s expert challenged the method’s scientific validity. The court preferred that evidence and found the required scientific basis for relying on CUSUM had not been established in this case. It did not declare the technique devoid of scientific value. The court consequently found no newly discovered fact established on that ground and said the confession was voluntary and given by Kelly alone.
The court concluded that the one newly discovered fact established—the missing photographs—did not call the conviction’s safety into question. It therefore refused Kelly’s application. The ruling was a decision on the application to review the conviction; the court did not quash it.