Mark Nash appeals convictions for murdering two Dublin women

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

Mark Nash appealed against his convictions for murdering Sylvia Sheils and Mary Callanan in Grangegorman, Dublin. The proceedings were reported on 7 November 2017.

Nash pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to murdering Sheils, 59, and Callanan, 61, between 6 and 7 March 1997. A jury found him unanimously guilty after a 48-day trial and four hours of deliberation. Mr Justice Carroll Moran imposed the mandatory life sentence on 20 April 2015.

Opening the appeal, Nash’s senior counsel Hugh Hartnett SC said another man, Dean Lyons, had confessed to the murders. The report said Nash later admitted carrying them out while detained over a separate double killing. Lyons died in 2000.

Hartnett said the prosecution case rested principally on Nash’s admissions and DNA evidence. He said scientists considered the risk of contamination low, but maintained that other profiles had been established and that the victims’ bed clothing had been brushed in the same room where Nash’s jacket was examined six weeks later.

For the Director of Public Prosecutions, Brendan Grehan SC argued that contamination would require a series of coincidences. He said the mixed profile could not be identified and rejected the suggestion that it was other people’s DNA. Grehan was due to continue his submissions before the three-judge Court of Appeal the following day.