The Court of Appeal has allowed appeals against conviction by Jimmy Conroy, Michael Conroy and Thomas Sweeney, finding a risk that the jury at their trial was wrongly directed to focus first on the defence case.
The three had been convicted on 1 March 2012 after a five-day trial in the Circuit Criminal Court in Galway. They were convicted of violent disorder, producing an article capable of inflicting serious injury, and assault causing harm. Each sought leave to appeal both conviction and sentence. The parties agreed that the appeals against conviction would be heard first, with sentence submissions to follow later if necessary.
The case concerned violence after a wedding at the Conroy family home. The prosecution said members of the Sweeney family were injured there by the applicants using weapons including a saw, axe, knife and sword. The defence position, conveyed through statements to gardaí and questions in cross-examination, was that no one was injured in the house and that the injuries occurred in a later row among the Sweeneys on the road to Streamstown Cross.
The applicants argued that the trial judge’s summing-up overemphasised that defence theory and did not fairly guide the jury through weaknesses they said existed in the prosecution evidence. Those points included inconsistencies in witnesses’ accounts, missing weapons, the absence of forensic examinations and the lack of searches at the house or Streamstown Cross.
The appeal court said the judge had properly explained the presumption of innocence, the prosecution’s burden to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, and that the accused did not have to prove anything. But when addressing the evidence, he directed the jury through a sequence of questions centred on whether the injuries could have happened after the Sweeneys left the house. The court said that approach could have suggested that if the jury rejected the defence explanation, the prosecution had proved its case.
The court held that the judge had failed to summarise the prosecution evidence in a balanced way or draw attention to disputed issues the jury needed to resolve. It stressed that an unproven prosecution case cannot be strengthened by the defence’s failure to rebut it. The court found a real risk that the jury approached its task under a mistaken understanding of the burden of proof. It allowed each applicant’s appeal against conviction.
The judgment does not determine the appeals against sentence. It records that those submissions would be heard at a later stage if necessary.