The Court of Appeal has dismissed a further application by Philippe Cauneze concerning his conviction for aggravated sexual assault, saying it raised no new or newly discovered facts and was vexatious.
The ex tempore judgment was delivered by remote hearing on 15 April 2021. The court said the application was brought under section 2 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993 in response to the conviction, which it dated to 10 March 2000. It described this as the fourth such application it had dealt with and, by its reckoning, the sixth overall.
The court noted that previous applications had been dismissed and that earlier judgments had described attempts to revisit matters already decided as vexatious and an abuse of process. It said the same applied to the current application.
The latest application focused in significant part on small bore shotguns said to have been present in Mr Cauneze’s home. He argued that the issue had not been dealt with in the book of evidence. The court said that might or might not be correct, but it could not amount to a newly discovered fact: Mr Cauneze and his legal team had access to the book before and during trial, and he had access to it afterwards.
The court also said the trial record showed that his legal team had raised the issue during cross-examination of a Garda witness on the fourth day of trial. The judgment recounts that the witness was questioned about an earlier prosecution involving a toy gun in the garden and that the issue was debated.
The court referred to recurring claims about the authenticity of the trial transcript and alleged falsification of the book of evidence, saying these had been raised before. It also recalled a 2011 judgment which said the trial judge considered Mr Cauneze’s own evidence ample to support conviction for the offence, while the jury acquitted him of more serious charges.
The Court of Appeal dismissed the application. The judgment does not record a new hearing on the conviction itself or any change to the conviction.