Man fails in murder appeal bid

A Dublin man who strangled his partner of seven years has failed in an attempt to have his conviction overturned on appeal.

The Court of Criminal Appeal today rejected the appeal brought by Stephen Carney (aged 35), who had pleaded not guilty to murdering 27-year-old Amanda Jenkins at Anna Livia Apartments, James' Street, Dublin 8 between October 5 and 6, 2007.

He was found guilty of her murder and jailed for life following a four day trial at the Central Criminal Court in November 2008.

The trial heard that Carney strangled Amanda Jenkins after arguing with her over a smell of cannabis he believed was permeating the apartment they shared.

After laying her body on the bedroom floor and covering it with a blanket, Carney then showered and went out drinking for the evening. He continued drinking at a funeral and a party the following day before eventually telephoning gardaí on the morning of October 7.

Lawyers for Carney had argued that it was “unprecedented” for the jury at the original trial to have been shown photographs of the victim’s body and that it was an error to allow in to evidence certain responses given by Carney to questions put to him by gardaí on the victim’s state of mind during the attack.

In a written judgement delivered this morning, the three judge court determined the trial judge was entitled to find that the photographs would “flesh out the prosecution case” and were not “particularly shocking”.

The court found that in allowing the photographs to go before the jury, Mr Justice Paul Carney had exercised the discretion vested in him to do so “appropriately and judicially”.

Questions put to the applicant in interview by gardaí were not, the appeal court determined, directed towards eliciting the victim’s state of mind but rather his own thoughts on the victim’s state of mind.

The CCA determined that although Carney’s responses were prejudicial, they were not so prejudicial as to outweigh their probative value.

Counsel for the applicant, Mr Michael O’Higgins SC, had submitted that the trial jury had been saddled with “unnecessary baggage” after being shown “grotesque” photographs of Amanda’s body taken by gardaí at the apartment.

Mr O’Higgins said the photographs were “repulsive in the extreme” and distributing them to the jury served no purpose, as they graphically illustrated evidence of abrasions on the victim’s neck, evidence which had already been given to court by the State Pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy.

He said that in addition to the prejudicial photographs, the trial judge should not have allowed statements given by Carney, in which it appeared questions were put to him as to the victim’s state of mind during the attack, to go in to evidence.

Mr O’Higgins said that Carney’s state of mind during the struggle was of vital importance, as the jury in the original trial were charged with deciding whether he was guilty of murder or if Amanda’s death was down to manslaughter due to provocation.

He said the prosecution instead sought to assess Amada Jenkins’ state of mind by submitting an interview question put to Carney as to whether he thought Amanda knew he was killing her and what was going through her mind.

Mr O’Higgins asked “how on earth” his client was expected to know the state of mind of the victim during the struggle said that this evidence ought not to have gone to the jury.

Counsel for the State, Mr Diarmaid McGuinness SC, told the court that because the defence contended that Carney had not intended to cause serious injury to the victim and kill her, evidence of her injuries and how she met her death was “hugely relevant”.

Mr McGuinness said that the photographs were a “physical and immutable” record of the injuries sustained by the victim and illustrated very clearly the evidence of manual strangulation as described by Dr Cassidy.

He said that the jury were also entitled to insight as to what Carney was thinking during the struggle and whether or not he knew he was killing his partner.

Mr McGuinness said that Carney’s answer of “She would have, yes” to an interview question of whether the victim knew she was being killed, was evidence of his acceptance of the consequences of what he was doing.