The Court of Appeal has dismissed G. H.’s appeal against his conviction for threatening to kill, finding that inconsistencies in the prosecution evidence did not make the case too weak to leave to the jury.
The appeal concerned a single conviction under section 5 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997. A jury convicted G. H. at Cork Circuit Criminal Court on 13 May 2019. He received a five-year prison sentence, with the final 18 months suspended for three years on conditions.
The charge arose from an incident outside court proceedings on 27 October 2017. The complainant, a social worker involved with G. H.’s partner and her children, said G. H. shouted threats to kill him and moved towards him. The complainant said he stepped backwards and a team leader, identified in the judgment as Keith Duff, intervened. Duff recalled hearing “I will cut you” and “I will see you”. The judgment records that G. H. told gardaí he had spoken angrily but had not made threats.
The complainant’s accounts differed on the precise words used. In cross-examination, he said he was less confident that G. H. had threatened to stab him than that he had repeatedly threatened to kill him. He also accepted that some words he described in court were not included in his statement to gardaí. The jury saw CCTV footage without audio; the court noted it appeared to show Duff approaching G. H., while G. H.’s front was not visible.
At trial, the defence asked the judge to direct an acquittal, arguing that the prosecution evidence was too inconsistent for a jury to rely on. The judge refused, and the jury convicted. On appeal, G. H. argued that the trial judge should have withdrawn the case because the two witnesses gave fundamentally different accounts, Duff’s recollection did not amount to a threat to kill, and the judge had applied the wrong standard.
The Court of Appeal applied the second limb of the Galbraith test: a case should be withdrawn only where the prosecution evidence is so infirm that no properly directed jury could convict, or where proceeding would be unfair. The court said credibility and reliability issues generally remain for the jury to decide.
It concluded that the evidence, taken at its strongest, could support a conviction beyond reasonable doubt and that the jury could resolve the conflicts. It also found no indication that the trial judge had applied the wrong test, despite the prosecutor’s description of the evidence needed for withdrawal as “absolutely diabolical”. The court dismissed the appeal against conviction; it did not set aside the conviction or sentence.