Wife murderer sees appeal rejected

The Court of Criminal Appeal has today rejected claims made on behalf of convicted murderer Brian Kearney that the quality of the circumstantial evidence in the case against him was insufficient to exclude the possibility that someone else murdered his wife Siobhan.

Last July three judge CCA, with Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns presiding and sitting with Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne and Mr Justice John MacMenamin dismissed Kearney's appeal against his conviction for the murder of his wife Siobhan at their Dublin home.

Today the CCA, in a written judgment outlining the reasons for the dismissal delivered by Mr Justice Kearns, said it "did not accept the argument that the quality of the circumstantial evidence in the case was poor."

"On the contrary the compelling nature of the circumstantial evidence was such to exclude every other reasonable possibility in the case," the Judge added.

Kearney (aged 52) was found guilty at the Central Criminal Court in March 2008 of murdering his wife, the mother of their young son, at their home at Carnroe, Knocknashee, Goatstown, on February 28, 2006.

He was convicted of his 38-year-old wife's murder by a majority jury verdict of 11 to one and Mr Justice Barry White imposed the mandatory life sentence.

During the trial, the prosecution argued Siobhan Kearney was planning to separate from her husband and to move into a new home the couple had built but this did not fit into Kearney's plans and he had strangled her with a vacuum cleaner flex before attempting to make her death look like a suicide.

In the appeal Michael O'Higgins SC for Kearney's argued that the conviction was "manifestly unsafe" because of the lack of primary fact evidence linking him to her killing.

However Mr Justice Kearns said that as the defence accepted that Siobhan did not commit suicide the appeal was an invitation to the CCA to "without any evidence whatsoever" speculate that some unknown intruder entered the family house and murdered Siobhan.

That intruder the Judge added "did not steal or remove any belongings", "came and went unseen at a busy time in the morning" and who without explanation "contrived to make the murder look like a suicide".

"This possibility, measured in the context of all the evidence that was given, is so remote and unlikely as to be off any scale of either probability or possibility," he added.

It was also claimed in the appeal that the trial judge had erred by allowing into evidence a reference to the fact Siobhan Kearney had kept a diary. It was kept by Siobhan on the advice of her solicitor to keep notes on the relationship with her husband for use in family law proceedings.

It was claimed that the references to the dairy during the trial had prejudiced Kearney. However Mr Justice Kearns said that the court was satisfied that the diary was relevant evidence in the trial. The diary the court said "could only relate to the state of mind of the deceased and not the defendant".

The Judge said that this evidence while it did not supply a motive for the murder, but was a relevant strand in the circumstantial evidence which in conjunction with other evidence "builds up, block by block" the edifice of circumstantial evidence on which the prosecution relies.

It was also claimed in the appeal that the prosecution had exceeded what was permissible in relation to Kearney's exercising of his right to silence during interviews with the Gardaí.

In dismissing that argument Mr Justice Kearns said that the court was "more than satisfied" that there is nothing procedurally wrong in telling a jury that an extensive interviewing process took place where "nothing of evidential value arose from those interviews".

The Judge added that the trial jury were expressly directed that they were not to draw any inferences adverse to Kearney from the fact that nothing arose in his interviews with the Gardai.

"Every proper and appropriate warning was given to the jury on this aspect of the case," continued the Judge who added that no inadmissible material in the exhibits was placed before the trial jury.