The Court of Appeal has dismissed Marius Gaizutis’s appeal against his murder conviction, ruling that the trial judge was right to leave the charge to the jury.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Edwards on 27 April 2020, concerned a conviction returned by a jury in the Central Criminal Court on 1 May 2015 after a five-day trial. Gaizutis was sentenced to life imprisonment. At the appeal hearing, he withdrew a separate motion challenging the sentence and the constitutionality of the law under which it was imposed. The only issue before the appeal court was his challenge to the conviction.
The appeal argued that the trial judge should have directed the jury to find Gaizutis guilty of manslaughter. His case was that his account to gardaí was the only account of the killing, and that other evidence supported it. In interviews, he said he had struck Audrius Butkus with an axe after an altercation at his home, claiming Butkus threatened his family and that he had lost control. He accepted responsibility for the killing but maintained it was self-defence and that he had not intended to kill.
The trial judge refused the defence application to withdraw the murder charge from the jury. She allowed the jury to consider provocation, and no complaint was made on appeal about how that issue was put to them.
The Court of Appeal said the jury was not required to accept every part of Gaizutis’s interviews simply because some details were consistent with other evidence. The court noted that the interviews contained both incriminating and exculpatory statements, and that assessing their credibility and weight was a matter for the jury. It also said evidence about the repeated blows, the circumstances in which Gaizutis said he obtained the axe, and the subsequent clean-up could be considered when assessing his account and the provocation claim.
The court held that a trial judge should withdraw a case only where there is insufficient evidence for a properly directed jury to convict in any circumstances, or where the evidence is too unreliable to support a safe conviction. It found a prima facie case of murder and said the partial defence of provocation did not, by itself, undermine the presumption that Gaizutis intended to kill or cause serious injury. Whether the prosecution had disproved provocation beyond reasonable doubt was for the jury to decide.
The appeal court concluded that the trial judge had made no error, that the trial was not unsatisfactory and that the verdict was not unsafe. It dismissed the appeal.