The Court of Appeal has dismissed Eugene Hanratty Snr.’s appeals against his conviction for assault causing harm and his four-year prison sentence, with the final year suspended.
Hanratty was convicted by a jury in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on 19 October 2022. He was sentenced on 8 November 2022. The appeal court, in a judgment delivered on 21 March 2024, found no basis to doubt the fairness of the trial or the safety of the verdict, and held that the sentence was not unduly severe.
The case arose from an incident on 24 November 2012 at Corragarry, Castleblaney, Co Monaghan. The prosecution case was that Hanratty’s son drove a vehicle that blocked Martin McAllister’s car near the McAllister home, after which Hanratty punched and kicked McAllister and dragged him from the car. The defence disputed that account. The court noted that no formal defence version was given in the 2022 trial and Hanratty did not give evidence.
The appeal argued that shortcomings in the Garda investigation made a fair trial impossible. These included missing blood swabs, the lack of forensic testing of McAllister’s jacket, and the failure to interview Hanratty or his son. The defence said jacket testing might have found firearms residue, supporting its account that McAllister fired a pistol during a dispute connected with duck shooting.
The Court of Appeal said the scene was a public place that the defence could have photographed or mapped. It considered the missing blood swabs unlikely to have added anything where the participants’ identities were not disputed. The court also said the firearms-residue argument depended on hindsight: the first suggestion that a gun had been discharged came at the first trial in 2016.
On the failure to interview Hanratty, the court found there was insufficient evidence that he had been readily available to Gardaí. He lived in Northern Ireland, and Gardaí used the European Arrest Warrant procedure to secure his attendance in Ireland. The court noted he consented to surrender. It concluded the trial judge was right to refuse the application to stop the trial and that the investigation complaints did not undermine the verdict.
Hanratty also argued that the sentencing judge gave insufficient weight to mitigation, including his age, health, good character and 41 recommendation letters, and wrongly treated the absence of a guilty plea as aggravating. The appeal court accepted that the sentencing remarks were not entirely free of ambiguity but found no substance to the claim that the right to go to trial had been treated as an aggravating factor.
The court said the injuries included multiple facial fractures and permanent loss of peripheral vision in McAllister’s left eye. It found the five-year headline sentence understandable, with reductions bringing the term to four years and suspending the final year. Both appeals were dismissed.