BRIAN KEARNEY, who was convicted of murdering his wife Siobhán in February 2006, has failed in his attempt to appeal to the Supreme Court on an issue of exceptional public importance.
The Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday refused to issue a certificate that the issue he raised was one of such general legal importance that it should be considered by the Supreme Court. He had already failed in a 2009 appeal to the same court when he argued that the trial judge had been wrong to admit some of the circumstantial evidence against him.
In that appeal he had argued that the trial judge had erred in law in permitting evidence being brought into the trial of the existence of a diary being kept by Ms Kearney in the weeks immediately preceding her death.
While the contents of the diary were not discussed during the trial, its existence was brought to support evidence that she had been seeking a separation. Her solicitor gave evidence that he had advised her to keep a diary.
Mr Kearney claimed that bringing in the existence of the diary encouraged the jury to speculate as to its contents, which had been prejudicial to him. The existence of the diary had not been of any probative value, he said. The court upheld the introduction of this evidence in the 2009 appeal.
He then asked that the Court of Criminal Appeal grant a certificate on whether the introduction of evidence of no specific probative value was one of exceptional public importance.
Mr Kearney had argued that there had been no contest on the fact that the dead woman had been seeking a separation, so the introduction of the existence of the diary was unnecessary.
The court said that when the existence of the diary was introduced, the prosecution case had not concluded and the existence of the diary was one strand in the totality of the prosecution’s case. Ms Kearney’s intention to separate was central to the prosecution case in that it established a possible motive.
The court concluded that the question was “very specific to the circumstances of this case” and did not raise an issue of law of general application.