The Court of Criminal Appeal has refused five applications for certificates that would have allowed the applicants to appeal to the Supreme Court over their convictions arising from the murder of Kieran Keane.
In a judgment delivered by Mr Justice Fennelly on 16 June 2010, the court said none of the applicants had identified a point of law of exceptional public importance that was involved in its earlier decision refusing leave to appeal. It therefore refused certificates under section 29 of the Courts of Justice Act 1924, as amended.
The five applicants—Anthony McCarthy, Christopher Costello, David Stanners, James McCarthy and Desmond Dundon—were convicted by a jury at the Central Criminal Court on 20 December 2003 of Keane’s murder, the attempted murder of Owen Treacy, and the false imprisonment of both men. The Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed their applications for leave to appeal on 25 July 2007. The certificate applications concerned whether that 2007 decision could be taken to the Supreme Court; the court was not reconsidering the convictions in this judgment.
The applicants raised issues about prosecution disclosure, publicity surrounding the trial, jury selection and composition, identification directions, and additional evidence proposed for the first-named applicant. The court concluded that the disclosure issue turned on its assessment that later-disclosed material would not have materially assisted the defence, rather than on any rule shifting the prosecution’s disclosure duty to the defence. On publicity, it said the earlier decision applied accepted legal principles to the trial judge’s exercise of discretion. It found no evidence establishing improper jury vetting and said the other jury and identification arguments likewise raised no qualifying point of law.
The additional-evidence issue concerned a proposed alibi witness, Karen O’Sullivan, whose evidence the court had declined to admit for the appeal in December 2006. The earlier ruling had found that the evidence might be important but that the applicant had not shown it could not reasonably have been discovered at trial. In the present judgment, the court rejected the contention that this reflected a rigid rule.
The court’s decision was limited to refusing the certificates. It held that the applicants had not met the statutory test for taking these matters to the Supreme Court.