The Court of Appeal has quashed Derek Lynch’s convictions for a post office robbery and possessing a firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence, ruling that inadmissible hearsay about motorcycle ownership made the convictions unsafe. It directed a retrial on both counts.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Edwards on 3 March 2016, concerned the appeal against conviction only. Lynch had also appealed his sentence, but the court stated that this judgment dealt solely with the convictions.
Lynch was convicted by a 10-2 majority jury verdict at Cork Circuit Criminal Court on 25 April 2013. The offences concerned a robbery at Friar’s Road Post Office, Cork, on 20 May 2010, and having a handgun with intent to commit robbery. He was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment, with the final 12 months suspended.
The judgment said a raider acting alone entered the post office with a firearm and took €2,594 after the cashier locked herself in a back room and pressed the panic button. CCTV captured the incident. A witness recorded the registration number of the motorcycle used to leave the scene as 03-C-18578.
At trial, Sergeant Ian Coughlin told the jury that a check of the Garda PULSE system identified Lynch as the motorcycle’s registered owner. The defence later objected, arguing that the system’s reliability had not been established and that this was not the proper way to prove ownership. Lynch’s appeal argued that the evidence was inadmissible hearsay and that the trial judge should have withdrawn the case from the jury.
The prosecution relied on the defence’s failure to make a timely hearsay objection at trial. The appeal court said the objection had been raised only after the evidence was given, and had focused on reliability and proof of ownership rather than hearsay. But it accepted that the failure to object in advance was likely due to inadvertence, not a tactical decision; the prosecution had conceded that it could not have been strategic.
The court held that the PULSE evidence was clearly inadmissible hearsay and profoundly prejudicial. It said the defence could not be treated as having accepted a relaxation of the hearsay rule simply because it had not objected in time. In the circumstances, the evidence rendered the convictions unsafe and unsatisfactory.
The court allowed the appeal, quashed both convictions and directed a retrial on both counts. The judgment does not determine the outcome of any retrial.