The Supreme Court has dismissed Barry Doyle’s appeal against his conviction for the murder of Shane Geoghegan, rejecting challenges to the admission of his confession and to the warrant used in his arrest.
Doyle was convicted after a 22-day Central Criminal Court trial and sentenced to life imprisonment in February 2012. The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction in June 2015. The Supreme Court heard three certified issues: access to a solicitor during questioning, the effect of a later ruling on search warrants, and whether alleged threats or inducements affected Doyle’s confession.
The appeal concerned Doyle’s 15th Garda interview, on 26 February 2009. After consulting his solicitor and speaking with him by telephone during the interview, Doyle admitted shooting Geoghegan. The judgment records that he described shooting him, chasing him behind a house and shooting him again. Doyle later signed a statement. The trial judge admitted the confession after a lengthy voir dire, which included reviewing about 20 hours of interview video.
Doyle argued that he should have had a solicitor present throughout questioning and that questioning in an earlier interview, after he asked for further legal advice, undermined the later confession. The Supreme Court found no established causal link between that questioning and the confession. It said a right to have a lawyer present throughout interviews could be recognised in future cases, but would not apply retrospectively to Doyle’s 2009 interviews.
The court also rejected Doyle’s reliance on the 2012 Damache ruling, which held a particular type of search warrant unconstitutional. That decision came eight days after Doyle’s trial ended. The warrant had not been challenged at trial, and the court said the issue could not fairly be raised after the fact on the record before it.
On alleged inducements, the court accepted that remarks about Doyle’s former partner, Victoria Gunnery, and their child were capable of amounting to a threat or promise. But it upheld the trial judge’s finding that any effect had dissipated before Doyle confessed. The Supreme Court concluded that the confession was supported by independent evidence, including ballistic evidence and testimony, and dismissed the appeal.