The Court of Appeal has dismissed Michael Murray’s appeal against convictions for rape, section 4 rape, sexual assault and false imprisonment, and affirmed the convictions. It found that none of the appeal grounds was made out and that the trial had not been shown to be unsatisfactory or the verdict unsafe.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Birmingham on 3 March 2017, dealt only with the convictions. Murray had been sentenced to 15 years in prison. The Director of Public Prosecutions had also sought a review of the sentence for alleged undue leniency, but the court said that matter was separate from the conviction appeal addressed in this judgment.
The prosecution case at trial was that, on 12 February 2010 and into the early hours of the next day, the complainant was walking home from work in Dublin’s Smithfield area with her four-year-old son when Murray lured them into an apartment. The prosecution alleged that he detained and assaulted her, and later took her son away by car before leaving him on a street. Murray’s defence was that the complainant had previously worked for him as an escort. She rejected that account.
The appeal challenged the admission of interviews conducted on 15 February 2010, the handling of the complainant’s evidence, alleged delay in disclosure of phone records, the absence of a social-media warning to the jury, and the admission of items found when gardaí returned to the apartment after it was no longer designated a crime scene.
On the interviews, the court held there was no mandatory requirement to have a doctor recertify Murray as fit before questioning resumed after a six-hour rest period. It upheld the trial judge’s factual finding that the interviews were voluntary and untainted. The court also rejected claims that the complainant’s examination was improper or that the defence had been unreasonably restricted in cross-examination.
The court said the defence had delayed seeking phone records and that their absence did not make the trial unsatisfactory. Murray had not pursued the social-media warning argument; the court noted there had been an opportunity to seek a warning before evidence began. It held that objections to items found in the later search went to their weight, rather than their admissibility, and rejected that appeal ground too.
During the appeal hearing, Murray discharged his lawyers and continued in person. The court recorded that he repudiated some arguments made on his behalf about the interviews. It nevertheless considered the grounds and dismissed the appeal.