The Court of Appeal has dismissed Graham Dwyer’s appeal against his 2015 conviction for the murder of Elaine O’Hara, finding that the trial was fair and the verdict safe.
In a judgment delivered on 24 March 2023, the court rejected challenges to the admission of interviews conducted while Dwyer was detained, claims that prejudicial material and media coverage undermined the trial, and an argument that the jury should not have considered the case because the prosecution had failed to prove a homicide.
The court also rejected Dwyer’s challenge to call data records obtained under the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011. It distinguished those records from the text messages recovered from phones and computer backups: the appeal’s admissibility challenge concerned the call data, not the messages.
The court accepted that the retention and access regime was unlawful under EU law. It nevertheless held that the call data was properly admitted under the applicable Irish evidence test. The records at issue related to Dwyer’s work phone and had a limited role, the court said. Other evidence, including text messages, CCTV and work records, independently supported the prosecution’s case linking him to phones used to communicate with O’Hara.
The appeal court also said that, even if the call data should have been excluded, its admission could not have caused a miscarriage of justice or deprived Dwyer of a chance of acquittal. It dismissed the appeal on that basis as well.
O’Hara was last seen alive on 22 August 2012. Her skeletal remains were found in the Killakee area in September 2013; a post-mortem examination could not determine the cause of death. Items, including phones, had also been recovered from Vartry Reservoir. The prosecution relied in part on messages it said showed Dwyer planned to meet O’Hara and kill her. Those were prosecution allegations and trial evidence, not a new finding made by the appeal court.
Dwyer argued that Gardaí had not given his solicitor enough information about the investigation and that the trial was prejudiced by sexual videos, the judge’s conduct and media attention. The court upheld the trial judge’s decisions on these matters and found no unfairness, whether considered separately or together. On the directed-acquittal ground, it held that circumstantial evidence could allow a properly directed jury to infer homicide even though the cause of death was unknown.