Patrick Byrnes loses appeal against rape convictions

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

Patrick Byrnes lost his appeal against his convictions at the Court of Appeal on 17 June 2020. The proceedings were reported on 17 June 2020.

In July 2018, a Central Criminal Court jury convicted Byrnes of 58 charges of indecent assault and two counts of rape involving his daughters, on dates between 1975 and 1985. He had pleaded not guilty to all charges and continued to deny them. Justice Paul McDermott sentenced him in October 2018 to eight years in prison, with two years suspended.

Byrnes appealed over how the trial judge had addressed alleged fabrication and collusion by the complainants in his instructions to the jury. His barrister, Roisin Lacey SC, also argued that the verdict was perverse and against the weight of evidence, and that the jury had not been properly directed on whether one complainant’s evidence could corroborate the other’s.

Lacey argued that the prosecution should have explained the basis on which it was advancing the cases together. Gerard Clarke SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said there had been no application for separate trials and no defence requisitions during the judge’s charge to the jury.

The appeal court was not persuaded by the grounds of appeal. It agreed that it would have been desirable for the prosecution to explain at the start why it was proceeding with counts involving two complainants and how the jury should deal with that. Dismissing the appeal, the court said an accused person was entitled to a fair trial, not a perfect trial.