The Court of Appeal has dismissed Marta Herda’s appeal against her conviction for murder, rejecting all grounds and leaving her life sentence in place.
Herda was convicted by a jury at the Central Criminal Court on 28 July 2017 of murdering Csaba Orsas, who drowned after a car entered the water at Arklow harbour on 13 July 2013. The appeal judgment was delivered on 12 October 2017 by Mr Justice Mahon, with Mr Justice Birmingham and Ms Justice Whelan also on the court.
The prosecution case at trial was that Herda deliberately drove the car into the water intending to kill Orsas or cause him serious harm. Herda did not give evidence, and no evidence was called for her. Her defence, advanced through cross-examination and submissions, disputed that she deliberately drove into the water or intended to kill or seriously harm him. It also challenged the reliability and meaning of statements attributed to her after the incident and argued that she had little or no recollection of events immediately beforehand.
The appeal challenged, among other matters, the trial judge’s directions on murder, manslaughter, accident, circumstantial evidence and reasonable doubt; the admission of evidence from two nurses about conversations with Herda in hospital; and the refusal to give a statutory warning about uncorroborated confession evidence.
The Court of Appeal found that the jury had been adequately directed on the distinction between murder and gross-negligence manslaughter, and on the prosecution’s burden to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. It said the defence case had been fairly summarised. The court also upheld the admission of the nurses’ evidence, finding it was given in a medical context rather than as part of an investigation.
On the requested warning under section 10 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993, the court said the statements attributed to Herda were capable of corroborating one another and that other evidence, including evidence about the car’s speed, could also provide corroboration. It therefore found no requirement for the warning. The court also rejected the remaining appeal arguments, including those concerning suicide, circumstantial evidence and the jury’s verdict directions.
The appeal concerned the safety of the conviction and the trial rulings. The court dismissed it; it did not conduct a new trial.