The Court of Appeal has quashed Aaron Ward’s convictions for threatening to kill or cause serious harm and producing an article capable of causing serious injury, finding that the trial judge’s rulings on three complainants’ statements did not adequately address the legal requirements for admitting them as evidence.
The court allowed the appeal on that ground and quashed the verdicts. It said it would consider in due course whether there should be a retrial; the judgment does not order one.
The convictions followed a jury trial at Galway Circuit Criminal Court in May 2017. The prosecution case concerned an incident at University College Galway’s A&E department on 8 February 2015. The judgment said Ward threatened Charlie Ward while swinging a meat cleaver, and again brandished it inside the hospital entrance. Those accounts formed part of the allegations and evidence at trial, not findings made by the Court of Appeal.
The three complainants later gave evidence seeking to withdraw or disavow their Garda statements. Charlie Ward said he did not want to give evidence and had been confused by medication when he made his statement. Wayne Ward said he had been drinking and taking tablets, could not remember making the statement and considered its contents lies. Patrick Ward said he was drunk, could not recall the events and could not confirm the statement was true. Garda witnesses told the trial court they believed the complainants were fit to make their statements.
The trial judge admitted the statements under section 16 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006. The Court of Appeal said that section required the judge to assess matters including whether the statements were voluntary and reliable, whether the witnesses understood the requirement to tell the truth, and whether admitting them risked unfairness. The rulings were brief and did not refer to several of those requirements. The statements were crucial to the prosecution case, the appeal court said, and it could not determine whether the omitted matters had been considered. It concluded that the deficiencies rendered the trial unsatisfactory.
The court dismissed the separate appeal ground challenging the trial judge’s refusal to direct an acquittal at the close of the prosecution case. Because the statements had been admitted, it said the jury was entitled to assess them alongside the witnesses’ trial evidence. It also rejected challenges to the jury directions and the weight of the verdicts, finding the directions adequate and the jury entitled to convict on the evidence presented.
Ward had received concurrent prison terms of six years and three years. The judgment records his appeal against sentence but does not separately state an outcome on that appeal; its conclusion allows the appeal concerning the admission of the statements and quashes the verdicts.