Aaron Connolly, who has spent over three years in jail serving a life sentence for the murder of teenager Cameron Reilly, has had his conviction quashed on appeal.
The Court of Appeal found on Monday that the trial judge’s charge to the jury lacked balance and in parts may have been seen as “advocacy” for the prosecution case.
Judge John Edwards said “such were the stridency and emphasis” of comments made by Judge Tony Hunt while he charged the jury, “there is a real possibility the jury could have perceived that he was personally convinced of the guilt of the accused and that implicitly he was pressing them to deliver a guilty verdict”.
While acknowledging Hunt gave the jury “impeccable instructions as to the applicable legal principles” involved, Edwards said some of the trial judge’s comments were capable of being perceived as “disparaging” and “mocking” of the defence case.
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The trial jury heard Connolly, who is now aged 26, initially denied that anything sexual happened between him and Reilly on the night and had told gardaí he was “straight”.
However, on the seventh day of the trial, Connolly made admissions through his lawyers that he performed oral sex on Reilly on the night he was killed.
The accused said that when he left, Reilly was still alive and standing up.
Friends of Reilly gave evidence to the trial that he had confided in them that he was bisexual shortly before his death.
Evidence was also heard from a witness who said he and Connolly had sexual relations on numerous occasions when they were teenagers. He said Connolly would tell people he was “straight”. Connolly, of Willistown, Drumcar, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of 18-year-old Cameron Reilly at Shamrock Hill, Dunleer, Co Louth, on May 26th, 2018, but was found guilty by a unanimous jury verdict in December 2022.
Reilly, a Dundalk Institute of Technology student, had been part of a group of around 15 young people who gathered in a field on the outskirts of the town on the night of May 25th, 2018. Alcohol and cannabis were consumed by some of those present, although Reilly’s best friend told the trial Cameron never took drugs. The group went to a local takeaway to get food shortly after midnight.
Reilly’s body was found in the field the following morning by a man out walking his dog.
Chief State Pathologist Dr Linda Mulligan told the trial the teenager’s cause of death was asphyxia due to external pressure on the neck, with no other contributing factors.
In his initial statement to gardaí, Connolly said he and Reilly went in different directions at the end of the night and after the pair parted, he “never looked back” to see which way Reilly went.
The accused said he could not remember what he was doing during a “missing hour” on the night Reilly died violently as he had taken a combination of drugs that made him black out.
Connolly told investigating officers: “I told you everything I know. I’d know if I killed someone.”
In launching an appeal against the conviction last June, Michael Bowman, representing Connolly, said Hunt had sought to reduce the defence case to the possibility of a “peeping Tom” who had come out of the bushes aroused or angry and killed Reilly.
“That is nothing if not denigrating of the defence case,” he said. He asked the three-judge court to look at the possibility that “a line had been crossed” and amounted to “a deconstruction of the defence closing and thereby of its defence”.
Counsel also suggested the trial judge had been excessively critical of the conduct of the defence in relation to some prosecution witnesses. He said the judge had raised the issue of “finger pointing” in relation to one witness and had told the jury that no apology had been offered to this person.
Bowman said this had the effect of “disparaging” the defence case. Bowman also raised the issue of how admissions made by Connolly through his counsel during the trial were dealt with in the judge’s charge.
These admissions were made under section 22 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984, which allows an accused person to admit certain parts of the prosecution case, removing the need to call witnesses to prove those aspects.
Under the Act, such admissions become “conclusive evidence” of the fact admitted. Among the admissions was a claim that Reilly was “in good health” when Connolly left him.
In delivering the Court of Appeal’s judgment on Monday, , Edwards said Hunt had given “impeccable instructions as to the applicable legal principles” in the case.
However, the court agreed with the submission of Connolly’s barristers that his charge to the jury lacked balance and that in places, “it may have been perceived by jury members as advocacy”.
“He did over and over again, and with great insistency, seek to make clear to the jury that he had strong personal views on certain aspects of the case,” said Edwards. He observed Hunt told the jury that, if the new narrative put forward by the Section 22 admission had been put forward four years previously, the gardaí would have sought to probe this further.
Hunt also said to the jury that this new narrative could not be received unquestioningly and be taken at face value “as being the answer to everything”, adding the idea that it could “is not something that sits comfortably with me, and I don’t think it would have sat comfortably with the guards”.
While acknowledging that many of the concerns being raised by the trial judge were legitimate ones, Edwards said that in commenting on the evidence, the trial judge did not confine himself to commending questions to the jury that they might consider asking.
“Rather, he repeatedly went further and told them what his personal views were on how such questions should be answered,” said Edwards.
He noted Hunt had “assiduously and repeatedly” told the jury that while his views were offered as personal comments, the jurors were not bound by them and were free to disregard those comments if they disagreed with them.
The Director of Public Prosecutions will now decide whether to apply for a retrial of the accused. The matter has gone back to June 4th.
