The Court of Criminal Appeal rejected Mantas Pauliukonis’s application for leave to appeal his murder conviction, finding no basis to overturn the trial judge’s decisions on the grounds pursued at the hearing.
Pauliukonis had been convicted of murdering Alexandra Filusins outside a nightclub in Swords, Co Dublin, following events on 2 and 3 June 2007. The trial took place at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin in October 2008. He received the mandatory life sentence.
The appeal court considered whether the trial judge should have withdrawn the case from the jury at the close of the prosecution evidence. The defence argued that a security guard’s account of a conversation with Pauliukonis was too ambiguous to amount to an admission, and that the prosecution should not have relied on common design because that was not how it had opened its case.
The court upheld the trial judge’s decision to let the case proceed. It said the jury could decide what the security guard’s account meant, including whether the words attributed to Pauliukonis indicated involvement. The court also found that the prosecution could rely on common design arguments arising from the evidence, particularly after the defence suggested in cross-examination that Pauliukonis had said he witnessed the stabbing.
A further ground challenged the judge’s direction that the jury had an obligation to convict if satisfied beyond reasonable doubt. The appeal court read the direction as a whole and concluded that the jury had been clearly told to acquit if it believed Pauliukonis was innocent or had a genuine doubt. The judge had not removed the jury’s ability to return a not-guilty verdict, the court said.
Only the first three grounds were pursued at the oral hearing. A fourth ground was treated as covered by the common-design argument, while the remaining grounds were not canvassed in written submissions. The application for leave to appeal was rejected. The judgment did not set aside the conviction or sentence.