The Court of Appeal has dismissed Zoltan Almasi’s appeal against his murder conviction, rejecting all five grounds and leaving his mandatory life sentence in place.
Almasi was convicted by a majority jury verdict on 10 March 2016 after a 12-day trial. He had pleaded not guilty to murdering Joseph Dunne at Harbour View, Naas, on 16 May 2014. He was sentenced to life imprisonment six days after the verdict.
The appeal court considered challenges to redactions made to records of Almasi’s Garda interviews, the trial judge’s refusal to let the jury consider provocation, directions to the jury during deliberations, and a ruling that excluded part of a witness’s proposed evidence.
The court held that the interview redactions did not unfairly distort Almasi’s answers or prevent him from presenting his defence. It said the trial judge could exclude material that might unfairly prejudice the prosecution, provided the defence was not significantly impeded. The appeal court also noted that no claim of oppressive or coercive interviewing had been raised.
On provocation, the court said the threshold for leaving the partial defence to a jury is evidential: there must be some cogent evidence suggesting each required element, including a total loss of self-control in response to provocation before the accused’s passion had time to cool. It concluded that the trial judge had assessed the evidence as showing rage but not evidence sufficient to suggest that total loss of control.
The jury deliberated for 11 hours and 13 minutes before returning a majority verdict. The appeal court found no indication of a hopeless deadlock and said the trial judge’s directions and decision to allow deliberations to continue were appropriate.
The final ground concerned proposed evidence that Dunne had broken a beer bottle and put its broken top in his hoodie pocket. The appeal court agreed with the trial judge that this evidence was irrelevant: Almasi was unaware of the bottle, and it played no part in the confrontation that led to Dunne’s death.
The judgment was delivered on 26 July 2018. The court dismissed the appeal.