Murderer tells appeal court gardaí planted and tampered with evidence

Vesel Jahiri stabbed Anna Finnegan to death in her home a month after she had sought refuge at a women’s shelter

Vesel Jahiri was convicted of the murder of Anna Finnegan. He is now appealing the conviction.

A convicted murderer who assaulted a barrister during his trial and conducted his own appeal because he was unable to find a lawyer to represent him has claimed that gardaí planted evidence against him during their investigation.

Vesel Jahiri, aged 42, stabbed Anna Finnegan, aged 25, to death in her home a month after she had sought refuge at a women’s shelter. Anna had written that Jahiri made her life “hell”, had beaten her and “almost killed her”. They had been together since she was 16 years old.

Jahiri was sentenced to life imprisonment after he was found guilty by a Central Criminal Court jury of the murder of the mother of his two children at Allendale Glen, Clonsilla, Dublin 15, on September 21, 2012.

Following the trial in April 2017, jurors also found him guilty of stabbing Anna’s brother Karl Finnegan in the chest and head during the same attack. Jahiri, of no fixed abode and who is serving his time in Cloverhill Prison, had pleaded not guilty to both charges and claimed he stabbed Mr Finnegan in self-defence after he first stabbed him.

Second trial

It was Jahiri’s second trial for murdering Ms Finnegan after a jury failed to reach a verdict in his first trial in 2014. The trial had been disrupted after Jahiri, who is from Kosovo, assaulted the prosecuting barrister. At the trial, Jahiri, who had earlier dismissed his legal team to represent himself, leapt across the benches and punched Patrick Marrinan in the face before being wrestled to the ground by prison officers and removed from the court.

When the trial resumed, the accused was accompanied by four prison officers dressed in full riot gear as he was brought back into court.

Jahiri appealed his conviction and claims that gardaí planted knives and a knife block at a temporary address he was staying at in Lohunda Crescent, Clonsilla. The appellant claims this was done to imply that he had to have brought the knife to the scene of the crime himself to stab Anna, which he denies.

Court of Appeal

At the Court of Appeal, Jahiri claimed that the trial judge failed to stop the trial and direct he be found not guilty as he was not allowed to inspect the knife as he was entitled to do. He further claims the trial judge erred in excluding Jahiri from the latter stages of the trial due to his behaviour and in denying him a closing speech.

Jahiri claims he took the knife from Mr Finnegan after being attacked at Allendale Glen and that Mr Finnegan must have stabbed his sister during the fight.

He also claims that gardaí wiped CCTV from Cabra Garda Station of gardaí allegedly wiping the blade of the knife to remove Mr Finnegan’s fingerprints, to leave only Jahiri’s fingerprints and Anna’s blood remaining.

Jahiri told the three-judge court that had the blade not been wiped, forensics would have revealed Mr Finnegan’s fingerprints underneath some of his. He claimed this would prove the appellant could have only held the knife after Mr Finnegan and this, submits Jahiri, would prove he could not have brought the knife to Allendale Glen.

The appellant further claims that gardaí then took a knife block, six knives, and a meat cleaver from Allendale Glen and planted it at his address so they could link it to the murder weapon as they were the same brand.

“The Constitution says all are equal before the law and I should not have been stopped to inspect the exhibits,” said Jahiri.

Jahiri submitted gardaí “hid and tampered with evidence to incriminate” him.

Anna Finnegan, aged 25, was stabbed to death in her home a month after she had sought refuge at a women’s shelter. Anna had written that Jahiri made her life 'hell'. 

Cathleen Noctor, for the State, said that much of Jahiri’s lengthy submission was “the appellant’s interpretation of the trial and that is a matter for the jury”.

“It has to be said that the appellant, for reasons best known to himself, has given misrepresentations of what happened at the trial,” said Ms Noctor. Jahiri had claimed that a neighbour’s 999 call had not been played to the jury in the second trial as it had in the first trial but Ms Noctor said it was not an exhibit in the case under appeal and Jahiri had cross-examined witnesses about the call at the trial.

Ms Noctor said that when Jahiri’s fifth and final legal team came off record they had told the trial Jahiri had received all the material in the case. The barrister said that no application had been made by Jahiri to exclude the knives or any evidence the prosecution had introduced in the trial.

Regarding Jahiri’s claims over his fingerprint being on the murder knife, Ms Noctor said “the jury heard all of it and rejected it”.

Ms Noctor said the CCTV in Cabra Garda Station from 2012 could not have been recovered after three weeks or a month when it deletes itself and there had been no issue over the matter from Jahiri’s legal teams.

“He complains of the failure to have the knives available to him and that he was denied the right to inspect them — the offences were in 2012, the trial was in 2014, and he was represented by five legal teams. Any of them could have made that application,” said Ms Noctor.

Jahiri also claims he had been denied a phone to contact witnesses in the case.

Ms Noctor said “every assistance” had been given to Jahiri to get his witnesses but he had not provided their details, which the prosecution described as a “ruse” on the defendant’s part.

Jahiri submitted he had not been properly charged with the crimes and thus had not been “lawfully” brought before the court, which meant his “arrest, trial, and conviction is unlawful on both”. 

Ms Noctor said Jahiri had been properly charged and properly returned for trial on both matters.

Mr Justice John Edwards said the court would reserve judgment in the matter.