Mark Farrelly and Christopher Corcoran convicted over robbery

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Mark Farrelly was convicted of four counts of false imprisonment and one count of robbery of €2.28 million at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on 21 May 2018. Judge Melanie Greally presided over the trial.

Christopher Corcoran was also convicted in that 2018 trial.

The case concerned the false imprisonment of four members of the Richardson family and the theft of €2.28 million during a tiger kidnapping-style incident on 13 and 14 March 2005.

Mark Farrelly and Christopher Corcoran had previously been convicted in 2009 at a trial before Judge Hunt. The Court of Criminal Appeal allowed their appeals in 2012. A further trial before Judge Martin Nolan in 2013 ended in jury disagreements in their cases.

Judge Mary Ellen Ring directed their acquittals at a trial in 2015. In June 2016, the Court of Appeal upheld the Director of Public Prosecutions’ appeal against those acquittals and ordered a retrial.

On 20 April 2020, the Court of Appeal dismissed Mark Farrelly’s conviction appeal. The judgment, delivered by Birmingham P., recorded that the court considered the appellants’ convictions safe.

That judgment dealt with conviction appeals rather than sentence appeals. It records Christopher Corcoran’s 2018 conviction but provides no separate appeal outcome for him.